Stable Delay Period Representations in the Posterior Parietal Cortex Facilitate Working-Memory-Guided Obstacle...

In complex environments, information about surrounding obstacles is stored in working memory (WM) and used to coordinate appropriate movements for avoidance. In quadrupeds, this WM system is particularly important for guiding hindleg stepping, as an animal can no longer see the obstacle underneath the body following foreleg clearance. Such obstacle WM involves the posterior parietal cortex (PPC), as deactivation of area 5 incurs WM deficits, precluding successful avoidance. However, the neural underpinnings of this involvement remain undefined. To reveal the neural substrates of this behavior, microelectrode arrays were implanted to record neuronal activity in area 5 during an obstacle WM task in cats. Early in the WM delay, neurons were modulated generally by obstacle presence or more specifically in relation to foreleg step height. Thus, information about the obstacle or about foreleg clearance can be retained in WM. In a separate set of neurons, this information was recalled later in the delay in order to plan subsequent hindleg stepping. Such early and late delay period signals were temporally bridged by neurons exhibiting obstacle-modulated activity sustained throughout the delay. These neurons represented a specialized subset of all recorded neurons, which maintained stable information coding across the WM delay. Ultimately, these various patterns of task-related modulation enable stable representations of obstacle-related information within the PPC to support successful WM-guided obstacle negotiation in the cat.