Correlation of primate superior colliculus and reticular formation discharge with proximal limb muscle activity.

We studied the discharge of neurons from both the superior colliculus (SC) and the underlying mesencephalic reticular formation (MRF) and its relation to the simultaneously recorded activity of 11 arm muscles. The 242 neurons tested with a center-out reach task yielded 2,586 pairs of neuron/muscle cross-correlations (normalized, such that perfect correlations are +/-1.0). Of these, 43% had peaks with magnitude as large as 0.15, a value that corresponds to the 5% level of significance, and 16% were as large as 0.25. The great majority of peaks in this latter group was positive. The median lag time within this group was 52 ms, indicating that the neuronal discharge tended to precede the correlated muscle activity. We found a small but significantly higher proportion of cells with these relatively strong correlations in the MRF than in the SC. For both areas, these occurred most frequently with muscles of the shoulder girdle and became less frequent for axial as well as for increasingly distal arm musculature. The results support a role for the SC and MRF in guiding the arm during reach movements via the control of proximal limb musculature.