Neuronal activity in cortical oculomotor areas during serial search task

我们分析了辅助视野（SEF）、辅助运动区（SMA）和前辅助运动区（pre-SMA）在执行三种运动任务时的神经元活动：用扫视捕捉视觉目标，在注视视觉注视点时将一只手臂伸向目标，或同时用扫视和手臂伸展捕捉目标。我们的数据表明，每个区域以不同的方式参与控制手臂和眼睛的运动。眼跳相关神经元主要分布于SEF。相反，手臂运动相关神经元主要存在于SMA和前SMA。此外，我们发现手臂运动相关神经元和眼跳相关神经元的活动不同，这取决于伴随的眼跳或手臂运动的存在与否。在所有三个领域都发现了这种上下文依赖关系。我们还发现，眼球或手臂运动之前的活动，以及眼球和手臂运动结合起来的活动，在sma前和SEF中出现的频率更高，这表明运动行为参与了与效应无关的方面。随后的分析显示，在三个区域中，手臂的侧边表现不同：在SMA中主要是对侧的，但在SMA前和SEF中主要是双侧的。

We analyzed neuronal activity in the supplementary eye field (SEF), supplementary motor area (SMA), and presupplementary motor area (pre-SMA) during the performance of three motor tasks : capturing a visual target with a saccade, reaching one arm to a target while gazing at a visual fixation point, or capturing a target with a saccade and arm-reach together. Our data demonstrated that each area was involved in controlling the arm and eye movements in a different manner. Saccade-related neurons were found mainly in the SEF. In contrast, arm-movement-related neurons were found primarily in the SMA and pre-SMA. In addition, we found that the activity of both arm-movement-related and saccade-related neurons differed, depending on the presence or absence of an accompanying saccade or arm movement. Such context dependency was found in all three areas. We also discovered that activity preceding eye or arm movement alone, and eye and arm movement combined, appeared more often in the pre-SMA and SEF, suggesting that involvement in effector-independent aspects of motor behavior. Subsequent analysis revealed that the laterality of arm representation differed in the three areas : it was predominantly contralateral in the SMA, but largely bilateral in the pre-SMA and SEF.