Memory fields of neurons in the primate prefrontal cortex

Many prefrontal (PF) neurons convey information about both an object’s identity (what) and its location (where). To explore how they represent conjunctions of what and where, we explored the receptive fields of their mnemonic activity (i.e., their “memory fields”) by requiring monkeys to remember both an object and its location at many positions throughout a wide portion of central vision. Many PF neurons conveyed object information and had highly localized memory fields that emphasized the contralateral, but not necessarily foveal, visual field. These results indicate that PF neurons can simultaneously convey precise location and object information and thus may play a role in constructing a unified representation of a visual scene.

许多前额叶（PF）神经元可同时传递关于物体身份（"是什么"）及其空间位置（"在哪里"）的信息。为探究这些神经元如何表征"是什么"与"在哪里"的结合信息，我们通过让猕猴在宽阔的中央视觉视野内的多个位置记住物体及其所在位置，分析了其记忆活动的感受野（即其"记忆场"）。结果显示，多数PF神经元可传递物体身份信息，且其记忆场具有高度空间局域化特征，优先响应对侧视野，但未必覆盖中央凹视觉区域。上述研究结果表明，PF神经元可同时传递精准的空间位置与物体身份信息，因此可能参与构建视觉场景的统一表征。