Coding of intention in the posterior parietal cortex
Abstract
To look at or reach for what we see, spatial information from the visual system must be transformed into a motor plan. The posterior parietal cortex (PPC) is well placed to perform this function, because it lies between visual areas, which encode spatial information, and motor cortical areas. The PPC contains several subdivisions, which are generally conceived as high-order sensory areas. Neurons in area 7a and the lateral intraparietal area fire before and during visually guided saccades. Other neurons in areas 7a and 5 are active before and during visually guided arm movements. These areas are also active during memory tasks in which the animal remembers the location of a target for hundreds of milliseconds before making an eye or arm movement. Such activity could reflect either visual attention or the intention to make movements. This question is difficult to resolve, because even if the animal maintains fixation while directing attention to a peripheral location, the observed neuronal activity could reflect movements that are planned but not executed. To address this, we recorded from the PPC while monkeys planned either reaches or saccades to a single remembered location. We now report that, for most neurons, activity before the movement depended on the type of movement being planned. We conclude that PPC contains signals related to what the animal intends to do.
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Parietal cortex activity preceded both execution and imagery responses, consistent with motor intention research.
“Our results demonstrate that neural activity in parietal cortex was observed prior to both execution and imagery responses, which is in agreement with motor intention studies (Snyder et al., 1997; Quiroga, 2006; Desmurget et al., 2009).”
From Mental imagery of speech and movement implicates the dynamics of internal forward models (2010) · cites this paper as Snyder et al., 1997
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- Authors
- Snyder, L. H., Batista, A. P., & Andersen, R. A.
- Affiliations
- California Institute of Technology (US)
- Venue
- Nature
- Published
- 1997-03
- Volume
- 386
- Issue
- 6621
- Pages
- 167-170
- ISSN
- 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
- 1476-4687
- OpenAlex
- W2016527110
- Cited by
- 1,103
- References
- 3
- Citations by year
- 2026: 19 · 2025: 21 · 2024: 15 · 2023: 27 · 2022: 20 · 2021: 30 · 2020: 27 · 2019: 35 · 2018: 26 · 2017: 37 · 2016: 20 · 2015: 53 · 2014: 36 · 2013: 49 · 2012: 39
- FWCI
- 27.48
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Nature (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- CaltechAUTHORS (California Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Motor Control and Adaptation
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Visual perception and processing mechanisms
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Multisensory perception and integration
- Keywords
- posterior parietal cortex, movement intention, visually guided saccades, area 7a, lateral intraparietal area, area 5, visual attention, spatial memory, motor planning, single-unit recording, monkeys
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Arm, Attention, Cues, Macaca, Motivation, Motor Activity, Motor Neurons, Neural Pathways, Neurons, Parietal Lobe, Saccades
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