Differential Kinematic Encoding of Saccades and Smooth-pursuit Eye Movements by Fastigial Neurons.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Sun Z
PROVIDER: S-EPMC9352845 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Aug
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Publications
Differential Kinematic Encoding of Saccades and Smooth-pursuit Eye Movements by Fastigial Neurons.
Sun Zongpeng Z Dicke Peter W PW Thier Peter P
Neuroscience bulletin 20220429 8
Similar Datasets
Project description:In this study, we address the question of whether a target is foveated during smooth pursuit. Specifically, we examine whether smooth pursuit eye movements land near the center-of-mass of the target, as is the case for saccades. To that end, we instructed eight untrained, healthy participants to follow moving targets, presented monocularly in a scanning laser ophthalmoscope. Stimuli moved either in a modified step-ramp (smooth pursuit), or made a single step (saccade), stepping 6° from the center. Targets were ring-shaped and either 0.6° or 1.7° in diameter. In an additional set of experiments, two participants collected more extensive data on smooth pursuit and saccades for a larger range of target sizes (0.6°, 1.7°, or 4.3°). During pursuit, eyes were rarely placed at target center, even when participants' fixational stability was taken into account. Furthermore, there was a clear tendency for distance from target center to increase with target size. This outcome was in contrast to saccades, where there was no effect of target size across participants. The difference in foveal placement between the two types of eye movements is consistent with their different purposes: closer inspection of the target for saccades versus maintenance of the target in the visual field for smooth pursuit.
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Project description:A patient affected by an ischaemic lesion of the right medial thalamic nucleus presented with a uniocular dissociation of upward vertical saccades and pursuit movement, with absent upward vertical saccades in the left eye. Clinical observations were confirmed by magnetic field scleral search coils analysis. During the vertical eye movement the patient denied any diplopia, thus suggesting a transient visual suppression in the left eye.
| S-EPMC1739144 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Previous studies have reported that concurrent manual tracking enhances smooth pursuit eye movements only when tracking a self-driven or a predictable moving target. Here, we used a control-theoretic approach to examine whether concurrent manual tracking enhances smooth pursuit of an unpredictable moving target. In the eye-hand tracking condition, participants used their eyes to track a Gaussian target that moved randomly along a horizontal axis. In the meantime, they used their dominant hand to move a mouse to control the horizontal movement of a Gaussian cursor to vertically align it with the target. In the eye-alone tracking condition, the target and cursor positions recorded in the eye-hand tracking condition were replayed, and participants only performed eye tracking of the target. Catch-up saccades were identified and removed from the recorded eye movements, allowing for a frequency-response analysis of the smooth pursuit response to unpredictable target motion. We found that the overall smooth pursuit gain was higher and the number of catch-up saccades made was less when eye tracking was accompanied by manual tracking than when not. We conclude that concurrent manual tracking enhances smooth pursuit. This enhancement is a fundamental property of eye-hand coordination that occurs regardless of the predictability of the target motion.
| S-EPMC4669211 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Saccades and smooth pursuit eye movements (SPEM) are two types of goal-directed eye movements whose kinematics differ profoundly, a fact that may have contributed to the notion that the underlying cerebellar substrates are separated. However, it is suggested that some Purkinje cells (PCs) in the oculomotor vermis (OMV) of monkey cerebellum may be involved in both saccades and SPEM, a puzzling finding in view of the different kinematic demands of the two types of eye movements. Such 'dual' OMV PCs might be oddities with little if any functional relevance. On the other hand, they might be representatives of a generic mechanism serving as common ground for saccades and SPEM. In our present study, we found that both saccade- and SPEM-related responses of individual PCs could be predicted well by linear combinations of eye acceleration, velocity and position. The relative weights of the contributions that these three kinematic parameters made depended on the type of eye movement. Whereas in the case of saccades eye position was the most important independent variable, it was velocity in the case of SPEM. This dissociation is in accordance with standard models of saccades and SPEM control which emphasize eye position and velocity respectively as the relevant controlled state variables.
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Project description:Smooth pursuit eye movements (pursuit) are used to minimize the retinal motion of moving objects. During pursuit, the pattern of motion on the retina carries not only information about the object movement but also reafferent information about the eye movement itself. The latter arises from the retinal flow of the stationary world in the direction opposite to the eye movement. To extract the global direction of motion of the tracked object and stationary world, the visual system needs to integrate ambiguous local motion measurements (i.e., the aperture problem). Unlike the tracked object, the stationary world's global motion is entirely determined by the eye movement and thus can be approximately derived from motor commands sent to the eye (i.e., from an efference copy). Because retinal motion opposite to the eye movement is dominant during pursuit, different motion integration mechanisms might be used for retinal motion in the same direction and opposite to pursuit. To investigate motion integration during pursuit, we tested direction discrimination of a brief change in global object motion. The global motion stimulus was a circular array of small static apertures within which one-dimensional gratings moved. We found increased coherence thresholds and a qualitatively different reflexive ocular tracking for global motion opposite to pursuit. Both effects suggest reduced sampling of motion opposite to pursuit, which results in an impaired ability to extract coherence in motion signals in the reafferent direction. We suggest that anisotropic motion integration is an adaptation to asymmetric retinal motion patterns experienced during pursuit eye movements. NEW & NOTEWORTHY This study provides a new understanding of how the visual system achieves coherent perception of an object's motion while the eyes themselves are moving. The visual system integrates local motion measurements to create a coherent percept of object motion. An analysis of perceptual judgments and reflexive eye movements to a brief change in an object's global motion confirms that the visual and oculomotor systems pick fewer samples to extract global motion opposite to the eye movement.
| S-EPMC6589720 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Patients with schizophrenia as well as individuals with high levels of schizotypy are known to have deficits in smooth pursuit eye movements (SPEM). Here, we investigated, for the first time, the neural mechanisms underlying SPEM performance in high schizotypy. Thirty-one healthy participants [N?=?19 low schizotypes, N?=?12 high schizotypes (HS)] underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging at 3T with concurrent oculographic recording while performing a SPEM task with sinusoidal stimuli at two velocities (0.2 and 0.4 Hz). Behaviorally, a significant interaction between schizotypy group and velocity was found for frequency of saccades during SPEM, indicating impairments in HS in the slow but not the fast condition. On the neural level, HS demonstrated lower brain activation in different regions of the occipital lobe known to be associated with early sensory and attentional processing and motion perception (V3A, middle occipital gyrus, and fusiform gyrus). This group difference in neural activation was independent of target velocity. Together, these findings replicate the observation of altered pursuit performance in highly schizotypal individuals and, for the first time, identify brain activation patterns accompanying these performance changes. These posterior activation differences are compatible with evidence of motion processing deficits from the schizophrenia literature and, therefore, suggest overlap between schizotypy and schizophrenia both on cognitive-perceptual and neurophysiological levels. However, deficits in frontal motor areas observed during pursuit in schizophrenia were not seen here, suggesting the operation of additional genetic and/or illness-related influences in the clinical disorder.
| S-EPMC6869106 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Currently, there are no quantitative studies of smooth pursuit, a behavior attributed to the fovea, in individuals with macular degeneration (MD). We hypothesize that pursuit in MD patients depends on the relative positions of the scotoma and target trajectory. We tested this hypothesis with a scanning laser ophthalmoscope (SLO), which allows for direct visualization of the target on the damaged retina. Monocular microperimetry and eye movements were assessed in eleven individuals with differing degrees of MD. Observers were asked to visually track a 1.7° target that moved in one of eight radial directions at 5°/s-6°/s. Consistent with our hypothesis, pursuit metrics depended on whether the target moved into or out of scotoma. Pursuit gains decreased with increasing scotoma extent in the target's heading direction (p = 0.017). Latencies were higher when the scotoma was present along the target trajectory (in either starting or heading directions, p < 0.001). Furthermore, an analysis of retinal position shows that targets fell on the fixational locus nearly 50% of the time. The results suggest that MD patients are capable of smooth pursuit eye movements, but are limited by target trajectory and scotoma characteristics.
| S-EPMC4748745 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Eye movements alter visual perceptions in a number of ways. During smooth-pursuit eye movements, previous studies reported decreased detection threshold for colored stimuli and for high-spatial-frequency luminance stimuli, suggesting a boost in the parvocellular system. The present study investigated the underlying neural mechanism using EEG in human participants. Participants followed a moving target with smooth-pursuit eye movements while steady-state visually evoked potentials (SSVEPs) were elicited by equiluminant red-green flickering gratings in the background. SSVEP responses to colored gratings were 18.9% higher during smooth pursuit than during fixation. There was no enhancement of SSVEPs by smooth pursuit when the flickering grating was defined by luminance instead of color. This result provides physiological evidence that the chromatic response in the visual system is boosted by the execution of smooth-pursuit eye movements in humans. Because the response improvement is thought to be the result of an improved response in the parvocellular system, SSVEPs to equiluminant stimuli could provide a direct test of parvocellular signaling, especially in populations where collecting an explicit behavioral response from the participant is not feasible.NEW & NOTEWORTHY We constantly move our eyes when we explore the world. Eye movements alter visual perception in various ways. The smooth-pursuit eye movements have been shown to boost color sensitivity. We recorded steady-state visually evoked potentials to equiluminant chromatic flickering stimuli and observed increased steady-state visually evoked potentials when participants smoothly pursued a moving target compared with when they maintained fixation. This work provides direct neurophysiological evidence for the parvocellular boost by smooth-pursuit eye movements in humans.
| S-EPMC5539450 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The uncompetitive NMDA receptor antagonist ketamine has been proposed to model symptoms of psychosis. Smooth pursuit eye movements (SPEM) are an established biomarker of schizophrenia. SPEM performance has been shown to be impaired in the schizophrenia spectrum and during ketamine administration in healthy volunteers. However, the neural mechanisms mediating SPEM impairments during ketamine administration are unknown. In a counter-balanced, placebo-controlled, double-blind, within-subjects design, 27 healthy participants received intravenous racemic ketamine (100 ng/mL target plasma concentration) on one of two assessment days and placebo (intravenous saline) on the other. Participants performed a block-design SPEM task during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) at 3 Tesla field strength. Self-ratings of psychosis-like experiences were obtained using the Psychotomimetic States Inventory (PSI). Ketamine administration induced psychosis-like symptoms, during ketamine infusion, participants showed increased ratings on the PSI dimensions cognitive disorganization, delusional thinking, perceptual distortion and mania. Ketamine led to robust deficits in SPEM performance, which were accompanied by reduced blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal in the SPEM network including primary visual cortex, area V5 and the right frontal eye field (FEF), compared to placebo. A measure of connectivity with V5 and FEF as seed regions, however, was not significantly affected by ketamine. These results are similar to the deviations found in schizophrenia patients. Our findings support the role of glutamate dysfunction in impaired smooth pursuit performance and the use of ketamine as a pharmacological model of psychosis, especially when combined with oculomotor biomarkers. Hum Brain Mapp 37:4047-4060, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
| S-EPMC6867533 | biostudies-literature
Project description:PurposeSerial dependence refers to the attraction of current perceptual responses toward previously seen stimuli. Despite extensive research on serial dependence, fundamental questions, such as how serial dependence changes with development, whether it affects the perception of sensory input, and what qualifies as serial dependence, remain unresolved. The current study aims to address these questions.MethodsWe tested 81 children (8-9 years) and 77 adults (18-30 years) with an ocular tracking task in which participants used their eyes to track a target moving in a specific direction on each trial. This task examined both the open-loop (pursuit initiation) and closed-loop (steady-state tracking) smooth pursuit eye movements.ResultsWe found an attractive bias in pursuit direction toward previously seen target motion direction during pursuit initiation but not sustained pursuit in both children and adults. Such a bias displayed both feature- and temporal-tuning characteristics of serial dependence, showed oblique-cardinal directional anisotropy, and was more pronounced in children than adults. The greater effect of serial dependence around oblique than cardinal directions and its increased magnitude in children compared to adults can be explained by the larger variability in pursuit direction around oblique directions and in children, as predicted by the Bayesian framework.ConclusionsSerial dependence in smooth pursuit occurs early during pursuit initiation when the response is driven by the perception of sensory input. Age-related changes in serial dependence reflect the fine-tuning of general brain functions, enhancing precision in tracking a moving target and thus reducing serial dependence effects.
| S-EPMC11684126 | biostudies-literature