Multisensory Interactions Influence Neuronal Spike Train Dynamics in the Posterior Parietal Cortex.

Although significant progress has been made in understanding multisensory interactions at the behavioral level, their underlying neural mechanisms remain relatively poorly understood in cortical areas, particularly during the control of action. In recent experiments where animals reached to and actively maintained their arm position at multiple spatial locations while receiving either proprioceptive or visual-proprioceptive position feedback, multisensory interactions were shown to be associated with reduced spiking (i.e. subadditivity) as well as reduced intra-trial and across-trial spiking variability in the superior parietal lobule (SPL). To further explore the nature of such interaction-induced changes in spiking variability we quantified the spike train dynamics of 231 of these neurons. Neurons were classified as Poisson, bursty, refractory, or oscillatory (in the 13-30 Hz "beta-band") based on their spike train power spectra and autocorrelograms. No neurons were classified as Poisson-like in either the proprioceptive or visual-proprioceptive conditions. Instead, oscillatory spiking was most commonly observed with many neurons exhibiting these oscillations under only one set of feedback conditions. The results suggest that the SPL may belong to a putative beta-synchronized network for arm position maintenance and that position estimation may be subserved by different subsets of neurons within this network depending on available sensory information. In addition, the nature of the observed spiking variability suggests that models of multisensory interactions in the SPL should account for both Poisson-like and non-Poisson variability.

Efficiency of visual feedback integration differs between dominant and non-dominant arms during a reaching task.

Recent studies have shown that patterns of endpoint variability following double-step reach sequences reflect the influence of both planning and execution-related processes, but are strongly dominated by noise associated with the online updating of movement plans based on visual feedback. However, it is currently unclear whether these results reflect the dominant arm/hemisphere's postulated specialization for visual feedback processing, or whether these effects reflect a more general "arm/hemisphere independent" preference for visual feedback in the control of reaching. To explore this, twelve subjects performed double-step reach sequences with their dominant and non-dominant arms to targets in 3D space with and without visual feedback of the arm. Variability was quantified using the volumes, aspect ratios, and orientations of 95% confidence ellipsoids fit to the distributions of reach endpoints. In consonance with previous findings, the availability of visual feedback resulted in ellipsoids that were significantly smaller, had greater aspect ratios, and were more aligned with the depth axis than those performed without visual feedback. Moreover, the effects of vision on aspect ratio and orientation were similar in magnitude for the dominant and non-dominant arms, suggesting that noise associated with planning and execution-related processes is managed in a similar way by the sensorimotor systems of each arm. However, the degree to which vision decreased ellipsoid volume was found to be significantly greater for the dominant arm. This suggests that the feedback control system of the dominant arm uses visual information more efficiently to control reaches to visual targets.