Basu, DS and Sendhilnathan, N and Murthy, A (2021) Neural mechanisms underlying the temporal control of sequential saccade planning in the frontal eye field. In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 118 (40).
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Abstract
Sequences of saccadic eye movements are instrumental in navigating our visual environment. While neural activity has been shown to ramp up to a threshold before single saccades, the neural underpinnings of multiple saccades is unknown. To understand the neural control of saccade sequences, we recorded from the frontal eye field (FEF) of macaque monkeys while they performed a sequential saccade task. We show that the concurrent planning of two saccade plans brings forth processing bottlenecks, specifically by decreasing the growth rate and increasing the threshold of saccade-related ramping activity. The rate disruption affected both saccade plans, and a computational model, wherein activity related to the two saccade plans mutually and asymmetrically inhibited each other, predicted the behavioral and neural results observed experimentally. Borrowing from models in psychology, our results demonstrate a capacity-sharing mechanism of processing bottlenecks, wherein multiple saccade plans in a sequence compete for the processing capacity by the perturbation of the saccade-related ramping activity. Finally, we show that, in contrast to movement-related neurons, visual activity in FEF neurons is not affected by the presence of multiple saccade targets, indicating that, for perceptually simple tasks, inhibition within movement-related neurons mainly instantiates capacity sharing. Taken together, we show how psychology-inspired models of capacity sharing can be mapped onto neural responses to understand the control of rapid saccade sequences.
| Item Type: | Journal Article |
|---|---|
| Publication: | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America |
| Publisher: | National Academy of Sciences |
| Additional Information: | The copyright for this article belongs to National Academy of Sciences. |
| Keywords: | article; computer model; controlled study; eye movement control; frontal eye field; growth rate; nerve cell; nonhuman; psychology; rhesus monkey; saccadic eye movement; action potential; animal; eye fixation; frontal lobe; Haplorhini; nerve cell; photostimulation; physiology; procedures; reaction time; saccadic eye movement; visual field, Action Potentials; Animals; Fixation, Ocular; Frontal Lobe; Haplorhini; Macaca mulatta; Neurons; Photic Stimulation; Reaction Time; Saccades; Visual Fields |
| Department/Centre: | Division of Biological Sciences > Centre for Neuroscience |
| Date Deposited: | 08 May 2023 07:18 |
| Last Modified: | 08 May 2023 07:18 |
| URI: | https://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/81636 |
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