Frontal eye field activity preceding aurally guided saccades

Abstract

1. We studied neuronal activity in the monkey's frontal eye field (FEF) in conjunction with saccades directed to auditory targets. 2. All FEF neurons with movement activity preceding saccades to visual targets also were active preceding saccades to auditory targets, even when such saccades were made in the dark. Movement cells generally had comparable bursts for aurally and visually guided saccades; visuomovement cells often had weaker bursts in conjunction with aurally guided saccades. 3. When these cells were tested from different initial fixation directions, movement fields associated with aurally guided saccades, like fields mapped with visual targets, were a function of saccade dimensions, and not the speaker's spatial location. Thus, even though sound location cues are chiefly craniotopic, the crucial factor for a FEF discharge before aurally guided saccades was the location of auditory target relative to the current direction of gaze. 4. Intracortical microstimulation at the sites of these cells evoked constant-vector saccades, and not goal-directed saccades. The direction and size of electrically elicited saccades generally matched the cell's movement field for aurally guided saccades. 5. Thus FEF activity appears to have a role in aurally guided as well as visually guided saccades. Moreover, visual and auditory target representations, although initially obtained in different coordinate systems, appear to converge to a common movement vector representation at the FEF stage of saccadic processing that is appropriate for transmittal to saccade-related burst neurons in the superior colliculus and pons.

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