ArticleBrain : a journal of neurology2019
Abstract goal representation in visual search by neurons in the human pre-supplementary motor area.
Article in Brain : a journal of neurology, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed, 34 citations in OpenAlex.
- Function-Specific Localization in the Supplementary Motor Area: A Potential Effective Target for Tourette Syndrome.CNS neuroscience & therapeutics · 2025Trial
- Article
- Abnormal intrinsic brain functional network dynamics in delayed encephalopathy after carbon monoxide poisoning.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Feature-based encoding of face identity by single neurons in the human amygdala and hippocampus.Nature human behaviour · 2025Article
- Gamma synchronization between the medial temporal lobe and medial frontal cortex for goal-directed visual attention in humans.Cell reports · 2025Article
- A large neuronal dataset for natural category-based free-gaze visual search in macaques.Scientific data · 2025Article
- Distinct attentional characteristics of neurons with visual feature coding in the primate brain.Science advances · 2025Article
- A neuronal code for object representation and memory in the human amygdala and hippocampus.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Behavioral and Neural Mechanisms of Face-Specific Attention during Goal-Directed Visual Search.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2024Article
- Distinct visual processing networks for foveal and peripheral visual fields.Communications biology · 2024Article
- Encoding of Visual Objects in the Human Medial Temporal Lobe.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2024Article
- Neural mechanisms of face familiarity and learning in the human amygdala and hippocampus.Cell reports · 2024Article
- A revisit of the amygdala theory of autism: Twenty years after.Neuropsychologia · 2023Review
- Face identity coding in the deep neural network and primate brain.Communications biology · 2022Article
- Asthma's effect on brain connectivity and cognitive decline.Frontiers in neurology · 2022Article
- Encoding of facial features by single neurons in the human amygdala and hippocampus.Communications biology · 2021Article
- The sooner the better: clinical and neural correlates of impulsive choice in Tourette disorder.Translational psychiatry · 2021Article
- Value-Related Neuronal Responses in the Human Amygdala during Observational Learning.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2020Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
The medial frontal cortex is important for goal-directed behaviours such as visual search. The pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA) plays a critical role in linking higher-level goals to actions, but little is known about the responses of individual cells in this area in humans. Pre-SMA dysfunction is thought to be a critical factor in the cognitive deficits that are observed in diseases such as Parkinson's disease and schizophrenia, making it important to develop a better mechanistic understanding of the pre-SMA's role in cognition. We simultaneously recorded single neurons in the human pre-SMA and eye movements while subjects performed goal-directed visual search tasks. We characterized two groups of neurons in the pre-SMA. First, 40% of neurons changed their firing rate whenever a fixation landed on the search target. These neurons responded to targets in an abstract manner across several conditions and tasks. Responses were invariant to motor output (i.e. button press or not), and to different ways of defining the search target (by instruction or pop-out). Second, ∼50% of neurons changed their response as a function of fixation order. Together, our results show that human pre-SMA neurons carry abstract signals during visual search that indicate whether a goal was reached in an action- and cue-independent manner. This suggests that the pre-SMA contributes to goal-directed behaviour by flexibly signalling goal detection and time elapsed since start of the search, and this process occurs regardless of task. These observations provide insights into how pre-SMA dysfunction might impact cognitive function.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.