Neuronal responses in monkey anterior putamen during operant bar-press behavior.

Single neuron activity was recorded in the monkey anterior putamen to compare visuomotor-related responses during operant bar-press behavior with visual discrimination of objects. Of 615 neurons recorded, 9.8% (60/615) responded to the presentation of food during forced delay of access to the bar. Of these 60 neurons, 38 were also tested with nonfood, and 19 of these responded to the nonfood objects regardless of the following movement. The amplitude of the visual-related responses of some differential neurons was graded for different objects to reflect the relative degree of preference for the food presented. However, these responses disappeared in reaction time tasks in which the bar could be accessed for pressing immediately upon presentation of an object. The visual response latency of differential neurons ranged from 50 to 700 ms (mean +/- SD, 386 +/- 211 ms), which was longer than that of the nondifferential responses (207 +/- 204 ms). These results suggest that anterior putamen neurons might participate in estimation of visual information that could be related to forecasting movement.