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Abstract:
In the antisaccade task, observers are instructed to suppress
saccades that often occur in reaction to the onset of peripheral
cues, and execute instead eye movements in the opposite direction.
Deficits in this task have been found in clinical populations with
known and suspected frontal lobe dysfunction. In this study, we
recorded event-related brain potentials (ERPs), time-locked to cue
onset and saccade initiation, for pro- and antisaccade movements to
investigate the relationship between performance in the antisaccade
task and frontal lobe activation in adults with no known visual or
neural disorders. Preliminary results with 25 subjects indicate
enhanced frontal positivity preceding cue onset when observers made
cue-directed saccades, either by instruction in a prosaccade task
or by failure to inhibit cue-directed saccades during an
antisaccade task. Before antisaccades, however, pre-cue frontal
activity was significantly more negative. The role of attention,
working memory and inhibition in anti- and prosaccade tasks and the
associated brain-wave activities will be discussed.
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