Commentary: Saccadic eye movements: overview of neural circuitry

doi:10.1016/S0079-6123(02)40044-1

Progress in Brain Research

Volume 140, 2002, Pages 89-96

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0079-6123(02)40044-1 Get rights and content

Abstract

Recent neuroanatomical, neurophysiological, clinical, and brain imaging studies have generated a wealth of data describing the neural control of saccadic eye movements and visual fixation. These studies have identified many of the cortical and subcortical structures involved in controlling the behavior. Critical nodes in the network include regions of the parietal and frontal cortices, basal ganglia, thalamus, superior colliculus, cerebellum, and brainstem reticular formation. Specific functions are likely not localized to only one brain area, but rather, they may be distributed across multiple areas. This commentary is used to review briefly the neural circuitry controlling saccadic eye movements and visual fixation.

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We examined whether previous inconsistent findings about the effect of anti-Parkinsonian medication on visually-guided saccades (VGS) were due to the use of different paradigms, which change the timing of fixation offset and target onset, or different target eccentricities.
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However, the prioritization of targets is not exclusively determined by the information gain. The neural substrates of saccade adaptation in the double-step paradigm are relatively well-known, given the sophisticated understanding of visuo-oculomotor pathways, acquired mostly through single-cell recordings in the awake monkey (for reviews see Fuchs, Kaneko, & Scudder, 1985; Krauzlis, 2005; Munoz, 2002; Sparks, 2002; White & Munoz, 2017). Many studies have investigated how error signals are processed in the brain.
When a saccadic eye movement does not land accurately on its visual target, subsequent saccades to the same target are subject to a corrective adjustment, which has been called saccade adaptation. Saccade adaptation has emerged as a go-to model for sensorimotor learning. Because observers show limited awareness of image manipulations during saccades, adaptive changes in saccade amplitude have long been thought to rely on the passive processing of visual error signals. However, it turns out that task-relevance has a modulatory effect on adaptation and that it can even be a sufficient cause for adaptation. Indeed, adaptation can be driven by a shift in task-relevant information even in the absence of a bottom-up visual error. This task-driven adaptation shares similar characteristics to bottom-up adaptation, that is adaptation triggered by a displacement of the eye-movement target. The effect of task-relevance is consistent with an integrated view of the saccadic system, where bottom-up and top-down signals converge to define the saccade target and the orienting of attention. We point to possible neural substrates of top-down adaptation, which largely remains to be elucidated in contrast to the detailed experimental and modeling work linking the cerebellum to bottom-up adaptation.
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Superior colliculus in the midbrain is considered to be involved in attentional and saccadic shifts and it coordinates saccadic orienting and related pupil dilation. ( Alexander, Crutcher, & DeLong, 1991; Munoz & Wurtz, 1995; Munoz, Dorris, Pare & Everling, 2000; Munoz, 2002; Netser, Ohayon & Gutfreund, 2010; Wang, Boehnke, White & Munoz, 2012; Marino et al., 2012). Locus coeruleus (LC) is brain structure mediating pupil dilation and cognitive processes (Aston-Jones & Cohen, 2005; Murphy, O’Connell, O’Sullivan, Robertson & Balsters, 2014).
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Commentary: Saccadic eye movements: overview of neural circuitry

Abstract

Trends Neurosci.

Prog. Neurobiol.

Vis. Res.

Vision Res.

Multimodal representation of space in the posterior parietal cortex and its use in planning movements

Annu. Rev. Neurosci.

Space and attention in parietal cortex

Annu. Rev. Neurosci.

Magnification factor and receptive field size in foveal striate cortex of the monkey

Exp. Brain Res.

Cortical control of saccades

Exp. Brain Res.

The frontal eye field is involved in spatial short-term memory but not in reflexive saccade inhibition

Exp. Brain Res.

Frontal lobe lesions in man cause difficulties in suppressing reflexive glances and in generating goal-directed saccades

Exp. Brain Res.