Abstract

A commentary on
Re-starting a neural race: anti-saccade correction

by Noorani, I., and Carpenter, R. H. S. (2014). Eur. J. Neurosci. 39, 159–164. doi: 10.1111/ejn.12396

Decision making is the process of accumulating evidence about the world and the utility of possible outcomes (Cutsuridis, 2010). A paradigm often used by behavioral neuroscientists to investigate decision processes is the antisaccade paradigm (see Figure 1A; Hallett, 1978). In the antisaccade paradigm subjects are required to suppress an erroneous saccade (error prosaccade) toward a peripheral stimulus and instead make an eye movement to a position in the opposite hemifield (antisaccade). The response repertoire of a subject performing the antisaccade task has been reported to be: (1) the subject makes an erroneous response (i.e., looking toward the peripheral stimulus), (2) the subject makes the antisaccade (i.e., looking in the opposite direction of the peripheral stimulus, and (3) the subject makes an erroneous response followed by a corrected antisaccade (Evdokimidis et al., 2002).