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Cerebral Cortex Advance Access published online on August 18, 2006
Cerebral Cortex, doi:10.1093/cercor/bhl058
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© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Article

Strength of Figure-Ground Activity in Monkey Primary Visual Cortex Predicts Saccadic Reaction Time in a Delayed Detection Task

Hans Supèr 1 * and Victor A. F. Lamme 2

1 ICREA & Dep. Psicología Básica, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad de Barcelona, 08035 Barcelona, Spain
2 The Netherlands Institute for Neurosciences, 1105 BA Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, 1018 WB Amsterdam, The Netherlands

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Hans Supèr, E-mail: hans.super{at}icrea.es


  Abstract

When and where are decisions made? In the visual system a saccade, which is a fast shift of gaze toward a target in the visual scene, is the behavioral outcome of a decision. Current neurophysiological data and reaction time models show that saccadic reaction times are determined by a build-up of activity in motor-related structures, such as the frontal eye fields. These structures depend on the sensory evidence of the stimulus. Here we use a delayed figure-ground detection task to show that late modulated activity in the visual cortex (V1) predicts saccadic reaction time. This predictive activity is part of the process of figure-ground segregation and is specific for the saccade target location. These observations indicate that sensory signals are directly involved in the decision of when and where to look.

Keywords: contextual modulation; decision making; eye movement; monkey; neurophysiology; saccade; sensorimotor integration; V1.
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