Lateral intraparietal area (LIP) is largely effector-specific in free-choice decisions

Despite many years of intense research, there is no strong consensus about the role of the lateral intraparietal area (LIP) in decision making. One view of LIP function is that it guides spatial attention, providing a “saliency map” of the external world. If this were the case, it would contribute to target selection regardless of which action would be performed to implement the choice. On the other hand, LIP inactivation has been shown to influence spatial selection and oculomotor metrics in free-choice decisions, which are made using eye movements, arguing that it contributes to saccade decisions. To dissociate between a more general attention role and a more effector specific saccade role, we reversibly inactivated LIP while non-human primates freely selected between two targets, presented in the two hemifields, with either saccades or reaches. Unilateral LIP inactivation induced a strong choice bias to ipsilesional targets when decisions were made with saccades. Interestingly, the inactivation also caused a reduction of contralesional choices when decisions were made with reaches, albeit the effect was less pronounced. These findings suggest that LIP is part of a network for making oculomotor decisions and is largely effector-specific in free-choice decisions.