Visuomotor interactions in responses of neurons in the middle and lateral suprasylvian cortices of the behaving cat

Abstract

We studied visuomotor processing in the middle (MS) and lateral suprasylvian (LS) cortices of the alert cat by making single cell recordings while the cat was working in a behavioral task requiring visual fixation and visually guided eye movements. We found responses with three different components: visual sensory, saccade-related motor, and fixation. Some cells exhibited purely visual responses and all of their activity during visuomotor tasks could be attributed to the sensory aspects of the task. Other cells showed no sensory response properties, but discharged in relation to the saccadic eye movements that the cat made to visual targets. A smaller number of fixation cells displayed increased discharge when the cat fixated a target light and usually only when that target was in a particular region of the visual field. These response components could be present in a variety of combinations in different cells, of which the largest proportion combined visuomotor responses and could take five general forms: simple visuomotor, saccadic enhanced, visually triggered movement (VTM), enhanced VTM, and disenhanced. Simple visuomotor responses had both a visual and saccade-related component. Saccadic enhanced responses had a visual response to the appearance of a spot in the cell's receptive field that became enhanced when the cat subsequently made a saccade to that spot. The VTM responses were synchronized better to the visual stimulus than to the saccade, but they also exhibited properties expected of motor responses. The last two classes of visuomotor responses were rare: one we termed enhanced VTM and the other disenhanced. Cells could combine different visuomotor response components or even sensory, saccade-related and fixation responses in different combinations for different directions of eye movements. Generally, the timing of the saccade-related responses occurred too late to play a role in the initiation of saccades: most (83%) saccade-related responses occurred between 40 ms before to 80 ms after the onset of the eye movement. Cells of all different types could be found in both the MS and LS areas, though in general the responses in LS were more sensory in nature while those in MS were more closely related to the eye movement. About a quarter of the cells were unresponsive during any aspect of our tasks.