The long-term objective of this research is to study forebrain mechanisms involved in the initiation of movements. Single-unit recordings will be made in the frontal lobe of alert monkeys performing various tasks of spatial discrimination. Unit activity will be analyzed to determine how neurons encode spatial information on target locations and goals of movements. The frontal eye field will be investigated first in relation with the performance of ocular saccades and head rotations towar real or anticipated, visual or auditory stimuli. Subsequently, the experiments will be extended to include the region around sulcus principalis and the performance of hand movements toward targets.
