The Roles of Cortical Areas in Guiding Eye Movements During Visual Search

Over the past 25 years, it has become clear that the lateral intraparietal area (LIP) and the frontal eye field (FEF) play important roles in guiding saccades. However, it is still unclear what different roles these area play: neurons in each area often behave quite similarly in standard search or oculomotor tasks. Using a visual foraging task, in which animals are free to move their eyes and from which we can record activity across multiple eye movements within a trial, we have identified how the activity in these two areas is coordinated to decide when and where to make a saccade and to keep track of where the eyes have already been. I will discuss the implications of these results and suggest that the areas are part of a recurrent circuit in which additional processing occurs between LIP and some FEF neurons, while others provide feedback to LIP about upcoming and previous saccades.