Neural Interactions Underlying Visuomotor Associations in the Human Brain

• Published in: Cerebral Cortex Vol. 29; no. 11; pp. 4551 - 4567
• Main Authors: Madhavan, Radhika, Bansal, Arjun K, Madsen, Joseph R, Golby, Alexandra J, Tierney, Travis S, Eskandar, Emad N, Anderson, William S, Kreiman, Gabriel
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Oxford University Press (OUP) 17.12.2019; Oxford University Press
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; Association Learning; Association Learning - physiology; Brain; Brain - physiology; Child; Female; Frontal Lobe; Frontal Lobe - physiology; Humans; Male; Middle Aged; Motor Activity; Neural Pathways; Neural Pathways - physiology; Neurons; Neurons - physiology; Original; Parietal Lobe; Parietal Lobe - physiology; Photic Stimulation; Psychomotor Performance; Psychomotor Performance - physiology; Temporal Lobe; Temporal Lobe - physiology; Visual Perception; Visual Perception - physiology; Young Adult; frontal cortex; visual cortex; human neurophysiology; reinforcement learning
• ISSN: 1047-3211; 1460-2199; 1460-2199
• DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhy333

Abstract Rapid and flexible learning during behavioral choices is critical to our daily endeavors and constitutes a hallmark of dynamic reasoning. An important paradigm to examine flexible behavior involves learning new arbitrary associations mapping visual inputs to motor outputs. We conjectured that visuomotor rules are instantiated by translating visual signals into actions through dynamic interactions between visual, frontal and motor cortex. We evaluated the neural representation of such visuomotor rules by performing intracranial field potential recordings in epilepsy subjects during a rule-learning delayed match-to-behavior task. Learning new visuomotor mappings led to the emergence of specific responses associating visual signals with motor outputs in 3 anatomical clusters in frontal, anteroventral temporal and posterior parietal cortex. After learning, mapping selective signals during the delay period showed interactions with visual and motor signals. These observations provide initial steps towards elucidating the dynamic circuits underlying flexible behavior and how communication between subregions of frontal, temporal, and parietal cortex leads to rapid learning of task-relevant choices.