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Representing Spatial Information for Limb Movement: Role of Area 5 in the Monkey

1995; Oxford University Press; Volume: 5; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/cercor/5.5.391

1460-2199

Francesco Lacquaniti, Emmanuel Guigon, Luigi Bianchi, Stefano Ferraina, Roberto Caminiti,

Muscle activation and electromyography studies

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) reaf-ferences and the commands that generate limb movement Here we propose that the superior parietal lobule (Brodmann area 5) might represent a substrata 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 monotonicalty 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 sub-population 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.