Kim J N, Shadlen M N
Department of Physiology and Biophysics, University of Washington Medical School, Seattle, Washington 98195-7290, USA.
Nat Neurosci. 1999 Feb;2(2):176-85. doi: 10.1038/5739.
To make a visual discrimination, the brain must extract relevant information from the retina, represent appropriate variables in the visual cortex and read out this representation to decide which of two or more alternatives is more likely. We recorded from neurons in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (areas 8 and 46) of the rhesus monkey while it performed a motion discrimination task. The monkey indicated its judgment of direction by making appropriate eye movements. As the monkey viewed the motion stimulus, the neural response predicted the monkey's subsequent gaze shift, hence its judgment of direction. The response comprised a mixture of high-level oculomotor signals and weaker visual sensory signals that reflected the strength and direction of motion. This combination of sensory integration and motor planning could reflect the conversion of visual motion information into a categorical decision about direction and thus give insight into the neural computations behind a simple cognitive act.
为了进行视觉辨别，大脑必须从视网膜提取相关信息，在视觉皮层中表征适当的变量，并解读这种表征，以确定两个或多个选项中哪一个更有可能。我们在恒河猴执行运动辨别任务时，记录了其背外侧前额叶皮层（8区和46区）的神经元活动。猴子通过做出适当的眼动来表明其对方向的判断。当猴子观看运动刺激时，神经反应预测了猴子随后的视线转移，从而预测了其对方向的判断。该反应包含了高水平的动眼神经信号和较弱的视觉感觉信号的混合，这些信号反映了运动的强度和方向。这种感觉整合和运动规划的结合可能反映了视觉运动信息向关于方向的分类决策的转换，从而深入了解简单认知行为背后的神经计算。
