A spatially nonselective baseline signal in parietal cortex reflects the probability of a monkey's success on the current trial.

ABSTRACT: We recorded the activity of neurons in the lateral intraparietal area of two monkeys while they performed two similar visual search tasks, one difficult, one easy. Each task began with a period of fixation followed by an array consisting of a single capital T and a number of lowercase t's. The monkey had to find the capital T and report its orientation, upright or inverted, with a hand movement. In the easy task the monkey could explore the array with saccades. In the difficult task the monkey had to continue fixating and find the capital T in the visual periphery. The baseline activity measured during the fixation period, at a time in which the monkey could not know if the impending task would be difficult or easy or where the target would appear, predicted the monkey's probability of suc

SUBMITTER: Zhang M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4066516 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature