Analyzing neuronal processing locus in stimulus-response association tasks (Q1374062)

The paper under review deals with the problem of characterising the functional role of the neuron in the processing of sensory/motor/decision aspects of the behavioral task of an animal trained to perform a two-stimulus, two choice task. Earlier studies, mainly based on signal detection analysis, have an inherent drawback arising from the very analysis and are related to the general problem of indistinguishability of neuronal activity due to the encoding and analysis of sensory stimuli and the animal's decision process. The authors attempt to overcome this deficiency by introducing the stimulus related operational curve and the response related operational curve; these curves are then compared and the correlational structure of the neuronal activity is brought out more clearly. Thus the authors are in a better position to deal with the central problem of interpreting properly neurophysiological data obtained when the animal is performing a simple two-by-two stimulus-response association task. These results are then applied to analyse the single unit activity recorded from the motor cortex of a monkey during the performance of a go/nogo task. Although the particular example illustrates the response characteristics of the firing of a single neuron, the method is capable of adaptation for a more general situation.