Expanding the Horizon: Cognitive Choices and the Superior Colliculus
In a recent breakthrough, the University of Chicago’s team has unveiled startling insights into the superior colliculus, a brain component once linked solely to eye and head movement. Their findings, documented in the esteemed periodical Nature Neuroscience, suggest the region’s pivotal influence extends to advanced cognitive tasks like visual sorting and choosing.
The traditional view of the superior colliculus (SC) as a coordinator of simple spatial positioning is now challenged.
It appears to exert tremendous influence on intricate cognitive actions. “Discovering such cognitive signals in the SC is unexpected, given its established link with basic spatial orientation and reflexive responses,” Dr. David Freedman, Neurobiology Professor at UChicago and the study’s leading author, stated.
The investigation concentrated on patterns of neural activity across brain sections responsible for defining visual categories.
Compared to the well-known posterior parietal cortex (PPC), involved in such visual categorization decisions, the SC exhibited more pronounced levels of participation.
Monkeys were trained in a meticulous experiment to categorize visuals on a display, rewarded with fruit juice for accurate sorting. By doing so, it allowed for detailed neural activity monitoring in both the SC and the PPC’s lateral intraparietal area. Notably, the tasks required no eye movement or spot-focused attention, ensuring the activity recorded was purely associated with categorization.
When researchers injected a drug to temporarily inhibit the SC, the monkeys’ motor abilities and visual processing largely stayed intact, but their image categorization capability drastically diminished until the drug wore off. This highlighted the SC’s vital role in cognitive functions that do not involve typical orienting actions.
Dr. Freedman reflected on what the SC’s involvement means, proposing…
“We see an ancient neural structure contributing to complex cognitive decisions, perhaps more so than some cortical areas examined in the study.” He even suggested that human spatial behaviors, such as the upward glance during recollection, might hint at spatial brain areas contributing to non-spatial cognitive roles.
For an in-depth look at the study, the article resides in Nature Neuroscience. Further information can be found on the University of Chicago’s official portal.
