Multiplexing of cognitive encoding by oculomotor networks leads to incidental gaze shifts

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Rosen, Matthew C.; Freedman, David J.
• 署名单位: University of Chicago; University of Chicago
• 刊物名称: PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0027-9661
• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2422331122
• 发表日期: 2025-04-08
• 关键词: parietal association cortex; fixational eye-movements; visual categories; neural activity; microsaccades; primate; intraparietal; DYNAMICS; REPRESENTATION; neurons

摘要

Humans and other animals are adept at learning to perform cognitively demanding behavioral tasks. Neurophysiological recordings in nonhuman primates during such tasks find that the requisite cognitive variables are encoded strongly in core oculomotor brain regions. Here, we assembled a large dataset-11 monkeys performing an abstract visual categorization task, surveyed across more than 1,000 neural recording sessions- to reveal that this produces a robust but uninstructed behavioral tell, observed in all subjects and experiments: small, cognitively modulated eye movements. We find that these eye movements are causally linked to activity in SC but not LIP, and that they occur following transient alignment of cognitive and saccadic population coding subspaces in SC. This behavioral signature of oculomotor engagement is absent during a similar task that does not require rule- based categorization, suggesting that abstract task behaviors recruit primate oculomotor networks more strongly than previously understood.