Eye position encoding in the macaque ventral intraparietal area (VIP)

MANY neurons in area VIP encode the location of visual stimuli in a non-ret inocentric frame of reference. In this context the question needed to be ad dressed whether the underlying coordinate transformation of the incoming vi sual signals could be generated within area VIP or whether this information would have to arrive from other areas. We tested 74 neurons in area VIP of two awake monkeys for an influence of eye position while animals performed a fixation task. More than half of the neurons (40/74) revealed an eye pos ition effect. At the population level, however, this effect was balanced ou t. We suggest that local connections within area VIP could be used to gener ate an encoding of visual information in a non-retinocentric frame of refer ence. NeuroReport 10:873-878 (C) 1999 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.