Topic: frontal eye field

Decisions about where to move the eyes depend on neurons in frontal eye field (FEF). Movement neurons in FEF accumulate salience evidence derived from FEF visual neurons to select the location of a saccade target among distractors. How visual neurons achieve this salience representation is unknown. We present a neuro-computational model of target selection called Salience by Competitive and Recurrent Interactions (SCRI), based on the competitive interaction model of attentional selection and decision-making (Smith & Sewell, 2013). SCRI selects targets by synthesizing localization and identific

Correlated activity between neurons can cause variability in behavior across trials, as trial-by-trial neuronal noise will propagate through the motor system. The extent to which correlated activity affects behavior depends on the properties of its translation into movement. A major hurdle in studying the effect of neural correlations on behavior is the need to assume a model of the relationship between neural activity and behavior. We developed a novel method that estimates the contribution of correlations to behavior, with minimal assumptions. We applied this method to the frontal eye field

Decision-making in noisy environments with constant sensory evidence involves integrating sequentially-sampled evidence, a strategy formalized by diffusion models which is supported by decades behavioral and neural findings. By contrast, it is unknown whether this strategy is also used during decision-making when the underlying sensory evidence is expected to change. Here, we trained monkeys to identify the dominant color of a dynamically refreshed checkerboard pattern that doesn't become informative until after a variable delay. Animals' behavioral responses were briefly suppressed after an a

Detecting a specific object in a visual scene is a task that the human visual system performs every day. To perform this target-specific object detection, it is necessary to filter out all unwanted objects during the processing, so that only the specific object can be detected. For this purpose, attention-related mechanisms along the visual pathway have been proposed to allow focusing on the desired object. Beuth and Hamker (2015) [1], using a biologically inspired recurrent model simulating lower and higher layers of the visual cortex, the frontal eye field, and the prefrontal cortex, showed

This study focused on unilateral spatial neglect (USN), a disorder of attention on the contralateral side caused by damage to the cerebral hemispheres. Existing evidence-based rehabilitation for USN is insufficient, prompting the need for an animal model to develop effective treatments. The study aims to establish an aged mouse model of USN targeting the medial agranular cortex, analogous to the human frontal eye field. Focal infarcts were induced in aged mice using photothrombosis, and USN was assessed in an 8-arm radial maze. Mice were given 11 minutes to freely explore the 8-arm radial maze