Stone Leland S, Krauzlis Richard J
Human Factors Research and Technology Division, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, USA.
J Vis. 2003 Dec 2;3(11):725-36. doi: 10.1167/3.11.7.
A fundamental question in primate neurobiology is to understand to what extent motor behaviors are driven by shared neural signals that also support conscious perception or by independent subconscious neural signals dedicated to motor control. Although it has clearly been established that cortical areas involved in processing visual motion support both perception and smooth pursuit eye movements, it remains unknown whether the same or different sets of neurons within these structures perform these two functions. Examination of the trial-by-trial variation in human perceptual and pursuit responses during a simultaneous psychophysical and oculomotor task reveals that the direction signals for pursuit and perception are not only similar on average but also co-vary on a trial-by-trial basis, even when performance is at or near chance and the decisions are determined largely by neural noise. We conclude that the neural signal encoding the direction of target motion that drives steady-state pursuit and supports concurrent perceptual judgments emanates from a shared ensemble of cortical neurons.
灵长类神经生物学中的一个基本问题是，了解运动行为在多大程度上是由支持有意识感知的共享神经信号驱动的，还是由专门用于运动控制的独立潜意识神经信号驱动的。虽然已经明确证实，参与处理视觉运动的皮层区域既支持感知，也支持平稳跟踪眼球运动，但这些结构中执行这两种功能的神经元是相同还是不同，仍然未知。在一项同时进行的心理物理学和动眼神经任务中，对人类感知和跟踪反应的逐次试验变化进行检查后发现，即使在表现处于或接近随机水平且决策很大程度上由神经噪声决定时，跟踪和感知的方向信号不仅平均相似，而且在逐次试验中也会共同变化。我们得出结论，编码驱动稳态跟踪并支持同时进行的感知判断的目标运动方向的神经信号，源自一组共享的皮层神经元。
