Neural ensemble decoding reveals a correlate of viewer- to object-centered spatial transformation in monkey parietal cortex.

The parietal cortex contains representations of space in multiple coordinate systems including retina-, head-, body-, and world-based systems. Previously, we found that when monkeys are required to perform spatial computations on objects, many neurons in parietal area 7a represent position in an object-centered coordinate system as well. Because visual information enters the brain in a retina-centered reference frame, generation of an object-centered reference requires the brain to perform computation on the visual input. We provide evidence that area 7a contains a correlate of that computation. Specifically, area 7a contains neurons that code information in retina- and object-centered coordinate systems. The information in retina-centered coordinates emerges first, followed by the information in object-centered coordinates. We found that the strength and accuracy of these representations is correlated across trials. Finally, we found that retina-centered information could be used to predict subsequent object-centered signals, but not vice versa. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that either area 7a, or an area that precedes area 7a in the visual processing hierarchy, is performing the retina- to object-centered transformation.