FUNCTIONAL INTERACTIONS BETWEEN THE DORSOLATERAL PREFRONTAL CORTEX AND FRONTAL EYE FIELDS
CHARMAINE TER LI MIN
CHARMAINE TER LI MIN
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Abstract
The dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex (dlPFC) is essential for deployment of selective
attention and maintenance of working memory. It is also involved in motor preparation,
and cortical areas with anatomical connections to the dlPFC receive this information to
be utilized for their respective purposes. One of these areas is the Frontal Eye Fields
(FEF), which is primarily involved in preparing eye saccades commands. Interactions
between the dlPFC and FEF are important for the delayed saccade task (DST), where
memorized information guides the preparation and execution of the subsequent saccade
response. When information is communicated between individual neurons, it is often
ascertained through neural synchrony in overlapping Receptive Fields (RF). However,
whether neural synchrony between the dlPFC and FEF is present as a function of motor
preparatory communication remains unclear. Hence, we trained two monkeys to perform
the DST and found that neural synchrony was not only observed between dlPFC and FEF
cells, but also significantly increased in overlapping RF compared to non-overlapping
RF. This study implicated that neural synchrony is a function of motor preparatory
transmission between the dlPFC and FEF.
Keywords
motor preparation, selective attention, working memory, neural synchrony, Receptive Fields
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Date
2020-04-19
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Thesis