A prefrontal source of visual target enhancement in the macaque area V4

Abstract

The ventral pre-arcuate area (VPA) in the primate prefrontal cortex has recently been found to play an important role in feature-based selection of visual targets in the context of a naturalistic free-gaze visual search task. While VPA neuronal activation was found to be necessary for behavioral performance as well as target selection in the FEF, its role in the broader context of the visual system remains to be addressed. To this end, we have interrogated the role of the VPA in mediating the effects of feature attention in the macaque visual area V4 by recording in V4 with and without muscimol inactivation in the VPA. We report here that neuronal activation in the VPA is necessary for firing rate increases related to target selection in V4. KEYWORDS: feature attention, visual search, muscimol, neurophysiology