Neural Coding of “Attention for Action” and “Response Selection” in Primate Anterior Cingulate Cortex

Noninvasive imaging techniques showed that the anterior cingulate cortex is related to higher-order cognitive and motor-related functions in humans. To elucidate the cellular mechanism of such cingulate functions, single-unit activity was recorded from three cingulate motor areas of macaque monkeys performing delayed conditional Go/No-go discrimination tasks using spatial (location) and nonspatial (color) visual cues. Unlike prefrontal neurons, only a few neurons coded the visual information on individual features (e.g., "left" or "red") in all of the rostral (CMAr), dorsal (CMAd), and ventral (CMAv) cingulate motor areas. Instead, many neurons in the CMAr exhibited the attention-like activity anticipating the second (conditioned) visual cues, with the specificity to visual category ("location" or "color"). In addition, there were a number of CMAr neurons specific to motor response (Go or No-go) in relation to the second visual cues. Some of the visual category-specific neurons in the CMAr further displayed the motor response-specific activity. On the other hand, many of the task-related CMAd and CMAv neurons seemed to be implicated directly in motor functions, such as preparation and execution of movements in Go trials. The present results suggest that the CMAr neurons may participate in cognitive and motor functions of "attention for action" and "response selection" for an appropriate action according to an intention, whereas the CMAd and CMAv neurons may be involved in "motor preparation and execution".