Resilience of FEF neuronal saccade code to V4 perturbations

The frontal eye field (FEF) plays a key role in initiating rapid eye movements known as saccades. Accumulation models have been proposed to explain the dynamic of these neurons and how they may enable the initiation of saccades. To update the scope of the viability of this model, we studied single neurons recorded from the FEF of two rhesus monkeys while they performed a memory-guided saccade task. We evaluated the degree to which each type of FEF neuron complied with these models by quantifying how precisely their discharge predicted an imminent saccade based on their immediate presaccadic activity. We found that decoders trained on single neurons with a stronger motor component performed better than decoders trained on neurons with a stronger visual component in predicting the saccade. Importantly, despite a dramatic effect on the reaction times, the perturbations delivered to the FEF neurons via area V4 did not impact their saccade predictability. Our results demonstrate a high degree of resilience of the FEF neuronal presaccadic discharge patterns, fulfilling the predictions of accumulation models.NEW & NOTEWORTHY We studied neurons in the brain's frontal eye field (FEF) to understand how these neurons predict swift eye shifts called saccades. We found that neurons with more movement-related activity were better at predicting saccades than those with sensory-related activity. Interestingly, electrical disruptions of this region strongly impacted saccade onset times but did not affect the individual neuron's saccade predictability, consistent with models suggesting that a specific threshold in neural activity triggers the saccade.