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Modulation of Neuronal Activity and Saccades at Theta Rhythm During Visual Search in Non-human Primates

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Abstract

Active exploratory behaviors have often been associated with theta oscillations in rodents, while theta oscillations during active exploration in non-human primates are still not well understood. We recorded neural activities in the frontal eye field (FEF) and V4 simultaneously when monkeys performed a free-gaze visual search task. Saccades were strongly phase-locked to theta oscillations of V4 and FEF local field potentials, and the phase-locking was dependent on saccade direction. The spiking probability of V4 and FEF units was significantly modulated by the theta phase in addition to the time-locked modulation associated with the evoked response. V4 and FEF units showed significantly stronger responses following saccades initiated at their preferred phases. Granger causality and ridge regression analysis showed modulatory effects of theta oscillations on saccade timing. Together, our study suggests phase-locking of saccades to the theta modulation of neural activity in visual and oculomotor cortical areas, in addition to the theta phase locking caused by saccade-triggered responses.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful for the financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31671108 and 31800900), the National Key R&D Program of China (2017YFC1307500), the Shenzhen Science and Technology Innovation Commission (JCYJ20180508152240368) and the Shenzhen Basic Research Program (JCYJ20200109114805984).

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  1. Jin Xie and Ting Yan contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Brain Cognition and Brain Disease Institute, Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen-Hong Kong Institute of Brain Science-Shenzhen Fundamental Research Institutions, Shenzhen, 518055, China

    Jin Xie, Ting Yan, Jie Zhang & Huihui Zhou

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Jin Xie & Jie Zhang

  3. The Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, Peng Cheng Laboratory, Shenzhen, 518000, China

    Jie Zhang, Zhengyu Ma & Huihui Zhou

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  1. Jin Xie
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  2. Ting Yan
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Correspondence to Huihui Zhou.

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Xie, J., Yan, T., Zhang, J. et al. Modulation of Neuronal Activity and Saccades at Theta Rhythm During Visual Search in Non-human Primates. Neurosci. Bull. 38, 1183–1198 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12264-022-00884-z

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