The timing of LIP remapping is consistent with a wave of activity and brings into question the relevance of the pre-saccadic remapped response.

Maintaining stable perception amidst dynamic visual input driven by eye movements is a remarkable feat of the brain. One proposed mechanism underlying this phenomenon is receptive field remapping in the lateral intraparietal area (LIP), in which neurons predictively update their receptive fields to compensate for eye movements. Models of remapping have suggested that the underlying mechanism may involve either a wave of activity or a single jump in activity. To test these competing hypotheses, we investigated the timing of remapping as a function of saccade length. We predicted that if remapping occurs through a jump, the remapped response will align more closely with saccade onset, independent of saccade length. Alternatively, if remapping involves a wave moving over time, we predicted that the remapped response will occur later for longer saccades when aligned by saccade onset. We recorded the activity of single LIP neurons and multi-unit activity in animals performing a saccade task in which a probe appeared in the post-saccadic receptive field before a 7, 14 or 21 deg saccade. We found that responses to single neurons and to multi-units were all consistent with the wave hypothesis. Surprisingly, we also found that remapping responses starting before the saccade only occurred in conditions in which the probe was presented within the classical receptive field. These findings bring into question whether pre-saccadic remapped responses are a fundamental feature of LIP remapping and support the idea that the mechanism underlying remapping is driven by a wave of activity rather than a jump.