Sensory and behavioral properties of neurons in posterior parietal cortex of the awake, trained monkey

Abstract

Neurons in posterior parietal cortex of the awake, trained monkey respond to passive visual and/or somatosensory stimuli. In general, the receptive fields of these cells are large and nonspecific. When these neurons are studied during visually guided hand movements and eye movements, most of their activity can be accounted for by passive sensory stimulation. However, for some visual cells, the response to a stimulus is enhanced when it is to be the target for a saccadic eye movement. This enhancement is selective for eye movements into the visual receptive field since it does not occur with eye movements to other parts of the visual field. Cells that discharge in association with a visual fixation task have foveal receptive fields and respond to the spots of light used as fixation targets. Cells discharging selectively in association with different directions of tracking eye movements have directionally selective responses to moving visual stimuli. Every cell in our sample discharging in association with movement could be driven by passive sensory stimuli. We conclude that the activity of neurons in posterior parietal cortex is dependent on and indicative of external stimuli but not predictive of movement.