Pre-excitatory pause in frontal eye field responses

We report a new characteristic of the presaccadic activity of the neurons i n the frontal eye field of macaque monkeys. A fraction of neurons exhibited a significant pause in discharge rate preceding the excitatory visual or m ovement-related response. This pre-excitatory pause, which has been observe d in striate and extrastriate visual areas, may represent a resetting of ne ural activation for detailed visual processing or saccade preparation.