Conditional oculomotor learning: population vectors in the supplementary eye field.

We have shown previously that the activity levels and preferred directions of supplementary eye field neurons change as monkeys learn to associate nonspatial visual information with a saccade (or the spatial target of that saccade). The present report describes changes in neuronal population vectors (PV) during such learning. PVs based on neuronal activity shortly before and after saccades predicted movement direction poorly in the earliest stage of learning, but as monkeys mastered novel stimulus-response mappings, PV accuracy and magnitude increased significantly.