New findings out of 91亚色 show that during a visual task, errors accumulate during a memory delay with more errors arising in the transition from memory to action. The research comes from Professor Doug Crawford鈥檚 Visuomotor Neuroscience Lab, with biology PhD candidate Amirsaman聽Sajad as first author.
Biology PhD candidate Amirsaman Sajad with Professor Doug Crawford
The study, , shows how neural activity in the frontal cortex initially reflects the visual goal accurately, but errors accumulate during a memory delay, and further escalate during the final memory-to-motor transformation.
鈥淭hink of all the times you see something and plan to act on it, but after only a short delay you make a mistake,鈥 explains Crawford. 鈥淔or example, before my morning coffee kicks in, I鈥檓 great at making silly mistakes, like putting the honey away in the fridge, instead of the peanut butter.鈥
The researchers recorded signals in the frontal cortex during the delay between target-related visual activity and intended gaze-related motor activity. The visual response and memory activity for the time in between was then analyzed.
鈥淲e looked at what happens from vision to memory to action, and how does the spatial code change through time in the frontal cortex,鈥 says Crawford.
What they found, he says, was that frontal eye field delay activity shows a progressive transition through intermediate target-gaze codes. Further to that, they recorded the coding of the intended gaze position with no delay response. The analytical comparison identifies errors accumulating during the memory delay, and increased errors in the memory to motor function.
The findings are of particular significance to research in diseases affecting frontal cortex function, says Crawford, because 鈥渋f errors accumulate in healthy individuals, the accumulations would be much worse with diseases that affect frontal cortex function鈥.
This type of finding, he says, can be used as a model for pharmacological research to see the influence of manipulating these same cells on error accumulation at the behavioral level.
The team continues to investigate and analyze data by recording from other parts of the brain, and looking at the outcomes when the brain endures more errors.
By Ashley Goodfellow Craig, YFile deputy editor