Abstract
Ocular saccades rapidly displace the fovea from one point of interest to another, thus minimizing the loss of visual information and ensuring the seamless continuity of visual perception. However, because of intrinsic variability in sensory-motor processing, saccades often miss their intended target, necessitating a secondary corrective saccade. Behavioral evidence suggests that the oculomotor system estimates saccadic error by relying on two sources of information: the retinal feedback obtained post-saccadically and an internal extra-retinal signal obtained from efference copy or proprioception. However, the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying this process remain elusive. We trained two rhesus monkeys to perform visually guided saccades towards a target that was imperceptibly displaced at saccade onset on some trials. We recorded activity from neurons in the lateral intraparietal area (LIP), an area implicated in visual, attentional and saccadic processing. We found that a subpopulation of neurons detect saccadic motor error by firing more strongly after an inaccurate saccade. This signal did not depend on retinal feedback or on the execution of a secondary corrective saccade. Moreover, inactivating LIP led to a large and selective increase in the latency of small (i.e., natural) corrective saccade initiation. Our results indicate a key role for LIP in saccadic error processing.
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Acknowledgements
The authors of this article are grateful to Leon Tremblay for his valuable advice during inactivation experiments, Suresh B. Krishna for reading and commenting this manuscript and Sandra Duperrier for histological analysis.
Funding
This work was supported by the LABEX (ANR-11—LABEX-0042) of University de Lyon within the program “Investissement d’Avenir”, and by Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-06-NEURO-024-01) to J-R.D. and by the Fondation pour la Recherche Médicale for J.M. (FDT20070910790).
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Munuera, J., Duhamel, JR. The role of the posterior parietal cortex in saccadic error processing. Brain Struct Funct 225, 763–784 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00429-020-02034-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00429-020-02034-5