A perception-based ERP reveals that the magnitude of delay matters for memory-guided reaching

Delayed action research has suggested that perceptual information about a visual stimulus decays over several seconds. With event-related potential (ERP) methodology, one should be able to track the time course of the electrophysiological processes associated with this decay. Recently, Cruikshank et al. (J Vis 12:29, 2012) found that the N170 ERP component reflected ventral stream processes linked to motor planning and perception for action. Specifically, the N170 was larger for actions that relied on perceptual-based information. However, the delay interval was very short (tens of ms). Behavioral and neuroimaging studies suggest that when longer delays are employed, reactivation of ventral areas is necessary in order to access a stored representation of the target's characteristics. Therefore, the N170 may reflect not only the perception-for-action processes, but also the accuracy of the representation. In order to test this, we traced the time course of the N170 in memory-guided reaching when 1-, 2-, and 3-s delays separated target occlusion and response initiation. During reach initiation, the N170 was more negative and peaked earlier for the 1 s than the 2- and 3-s delays and correlated significantly with performance at the longest delay. These results suggest that the neural mechanisms involved in movement planning change for delays beyond 1 s. The smaller N170 may reflect an impoverished visual perceptual representation in the ventral stream. To our knowledge, these are the first electrophysiological results to suggest that there is decay of visual perceptual information that occurs with increasing time.