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Science 11 July 2003:
Vol. 301. no. 5630, pp. 233 - 236
DOI: 10.1126/science.1084884
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Reports

Conversion of Working Memory to Motor Sequence in the Monkey Premotor Cortex

Machiko Ohbayashi,* Kenichi Ohki,{dagger} Yasushi Miyashita*

To plan a serial order behavior, we hold serial sensory information in our minds and convert it to a movement program. We trained monkeys to memorize a sequence of positional cues and to reproduce it by making saccades in either the original or reverse order. The order was determined in the middle of a trial on the basis of an instruction stimulus. Triggered by the instruction stimulus, single neurons in the dorsal premotor cortex became transiently active only when the order needed to be determined. These transient neurons, together with nearby sustained neurons that hold information on cue or movement sequences, appear to mediate the generation of a motor program from the maintained information.

Department of Physiology, University of Tokyo School of Medicine, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan.



{dagger} Present address: Department of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School, 220 Longwood Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: ohbayashi-tky{at}umin.ac.jp (M.O.) or yasushi_miyashita{at}m.u-tokyo.ac.jp (Y.M.)

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