Electrophysiological single electrode figure-ground modulation data from monkey superior colliculus

This dataset contains electrophysiological single cell activity recorded from cells from the different layers of the Superior Colliculus (SC) . One of the most important tasks of the visual system is to segregate objects from their backgrounds to guide behavior, a process called figure-ground segregation (FGS). Neural correlates of FGS have been found in visual areas as early as the primary visual cortex (V1) (i.e., Lamme, 1995). V1 neurons of macaque monkeys showed enhanced responses to figures (objects) compared to backgrounds, an effect known as figure-ground modulation (FGM). Furthermore, it has been shown that there was a relationship in V1 between FGM and eye movements that were made towards segregated figures, i.e. that activity in V1 correlated with behavior (Poort et al., 2012). What was yet unknown is how and where the FGM signal observed in visual areas was transformed into a motor response in order to make eye movements towards these segregated objects. Therefore, in this study we investigated the role of the subcortical superior colliculus (SC) in this sensory-motor transformation during FGS. SC is a multi-layer structure and consists of layers in which cells are responsive to visual stimuli and layers in which cells are responsive to movements, making it the ideal candidate to study this sensory-motor transformation. We trained two macaque monkeys on a textured figure-ground segregation task and subsequently we measured their SC activity from cells in the different layers in response to figures and backgrounds, and furthermore we measured the SC response when the monkeys made eye movements towards the figures.