Spatial bias in anti-saccade endpoints following bilateral dorsal posterior parietal lesions

Anti-saccades are eye movements in which the saccade is executed in the opposite direction of a visual target and are often hypometric. Because the visual target and saccade goal are decoupled, it has been suggested that competition between the two locations occurs and needs to be resolved. It has been hypothesized that the hypometria of anti-saccades reflects this spatial competition by revealing a bias towards the visual target. To confirm that this hypometria is not simply due to reduced gain, we tested 10 healthy subjects on three different anti-saccade spatial configuration tasks: 90° away across hemifields, 90° away within the same hemifield and 180° away (classic, diagonally opposite). Specifically, we examined whether saccade endpoints showed evidence for the visual target location's interference with anti-saccade programming and execution processes. Among other neural substrates involved in anti-saccades production, the dorsal posterior parietal cortex (PPC) has been implicated in the spatial inhibition of contralateral visual target. To gain insight into the neural processes involved in spatial competition during anti-saccades, we also tested one patient with a bilateral dorsal PPC lesion. In all spatial configurations, we observed that anti-saccade endpoints demonstrated a spatial bias towards the visual target for all participants, likely due to an incomplete inhibition of the visual target location. This spatial bias was exacerbated in our patient, which suggests that the dorsal PPC contributes to the amalgamation of the two competing spatial representations.