Biomedical subjects

S Ferraina

Publications and source records attributed to S Ferraina.

21 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

PubMedDate not supplied

Representing spatial information for limb movement: role of area 5 in the monkey.

How is spatial information for limb movement encoded in the brain? Computational and psychophysical studies suggest that beginning hand position, via-points, and target are specified relative to the body to afford a comparison between the sensory (e.g., kinesthetic) reafferences and the commands that generate limb movement. Here we propose that the superior parietal lobule (Brodmann area 5) might represent a substrate for a body-centered positional code. Monkeys made arm movements in different parts of 3D space in a reaction-time task. We found that the activity of area 5 neurons can be related to either the starting point, or the final point, or combinations of the two. Neural activity is monotonically tuned in a body-centered frame of reference, whose coordinates define the azimuth, elevation, and distance of the hand. Each spatial coordinate tends to be encoded in a different subpopulation of neurons. This parcellation could be a neural correlate of the psychophysical observation that these spatial parameters are processed in parallel and largely independent of each other in man.

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PubMedDate not supplied

Cortical networks for visual reaching: physiological and anatomical organization of frontal and parietal lobe arm regions.

The functional and structural properties of the dorsolateral frontal lobe and posterior parietal proximal arm representations were studied in macaque monkeys. Physiological mapping of primary motor (MI), dorsal premotor (PMd), and posterior parietal (area 5) cortices was performed in behaving monkeys trained in an instructed-delay reaching task. The parietofrontal corticocortical connectivities of these same areas were subsequently examined anatomically by means of retrograde tracing techniques. Signal-, set-, movement-, and position-related directional neuronal activities were distributed nonuniformly within the task-related areas in both frontal and parietal cortices. Within the frontal lobe, moving caudally from PMd to the MI, the activity that signals for the visuo-spatial events leading to target localization decreased, while the activity more directly linked to movement generation increased. Physiological recordings in the superior parietal lobule revealed a gradient-like distribution of functional properties similar to that observed in the frontal lobe. Signal- and set-related activities were encountered more frequently in the intermediate and ventral part of the medial bank of the intraparietal sulcus (IPS), in area MIP. Movement-and position-related activities were distributed more uniformly within the superior parietal lobule (SPL), in both dorsal area 5 and in MIP. Frontal and parietal regions sharing similar functional properties were preferentially connected through their association pathways. As a result of this study, area MIP, and possibly areas MDP and 7m as well, emerge as the parietal nodes by which visual information may be relayed to the frontal lobe arm region. These parietal and frontal areas, along with their association connections, represent a potential cortical network for visual reaching. The architecture of this network is ideal for coding reaching as the result of a combination between visual and somatic information.

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PubMedDate not supplied

The sources of visual information to the primate frontal lobe: a novel role for the superior parietal lobule.

Reaching movements are performed in order to bring the hand to targets of interest. It is widely believed that the distributed cortical network underlying visual reaching transforms the information concerning the spatial location of the target into an appropriate motor command. Modern views decompose this process into sequences of coordinate transformations between informational domains. The set of cortical areas and pathways by which the information on target location is relayed from the visual areas of the occipital lobe to the motor areas of the frontal lobe have, so far, been poorly understood. Recent data from different fields of neuroscience offer the basis for a new definition of the cortical system subserving reaching and, at the same time, for a reconsideration of the nature of the underlying visuo-to-motor transformation.

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