Cortical information flow during flexible sensorimotor decisions

• DOI: 10.1126/science.aab0551
• Publication Date: 2015-06-18T18:10:13Z
• Authors: Markus Siegel; Timothy J. Buschman; Earl K. Miller
• Keywords: Cerebral Cortex; Male; 0301 basic medicine; Color Vision; 500; Prefrontal Cortex; Macaca mulatta; Temporal Lobe; Motion; 03 medical and health sciences; Mental Processes; Feedback, Sensory; Parietal Lobe; Animals; Female; Visual Pathways; Cues; Photic Stimulation; Visual Cortex

Signal flow during sensorimotor choices

Little is known about the flow of task signals across the brain. Siegel et al. simultaneously recorded from multiple units in the sensory, parietal, prefrontal, and motor cortex while monkeys were cued to perform one among two possible simple tasks. The proportion of neurons coding for stimuli, cues, tasks, and choices, and their response latency, varied across regions. Parietal and prefrontal brain regions encoded task information and choices with the same latency. Interestingly, all brain areas encoded all types of information. However, they differed functionally according to the proportions of neurons and their response latency.

Science , this issue p. 1352