Frontal eye field neurons assess visual stability across saccades.
Abstract
The image on the retina may move because the eyes move, or because something in the
visual scene moves. The brain is not fooled by this ambiguity. Even as we make saccades,
we are able to detect whether visual objects remain stable or move. Here we test whether
this ability to assess visual stability across saccades is present at the single-neuron
level in the frontal eye field (FEF), an area that receives both visual input and
information about imminent saccades. Our hypothesis was that neurons in the FEF report
whether a visual stimulus remains stable or moves as a saccade is made. Monkeys made
saccades in the presence of a visual stimulus outside of the receptive field. In some
trials, the stimulus remained stable, but in other trials, it moved during the saccade.
In every trial, the stimulus occupied the center of the receptive field after the
saccade, thus evoking a reafferent visual response. We found that many FEF neurons
signaled, in the strength and timing of their reafferent response, whether the stimulus
had remained stable or moved. Reafferent responses were tuned for the amount of stimulus
translation, and, in accordance with human psychophysics, tuning was better (more
prevalent, stronger, and quicker) for stimuli that moved perpendicular, rather than
parallel, to the saccade. Tuning was sometimes present as well for nonspatial transaccadic
changes (in color, size, or both). Our results indicate that FEF neurons evaluate
visual stability during saccades and may be general purpose detectors of transaccadic
visual change.
Type
Journal articleSubject
Action PotentialsAnalysis of Variance
Animals
Brain Mapping
Female
Fixation, Ocular
Frontal Lobe
Macaca mulatta
Male
Orientation
Photic Stimulation
Psychophysics
Reaction Time
Saccades
Sensory Receptor Cells
Visual Fields
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/10299Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1320-11.2012Publication Info
Crapse, Trinity B; & Sommer, Marc A (2012). Frontal eye field neurons assess visual stability across saccades. J Neurosci, 32(8). pp. 2835-2845. 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1320-11.2012. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/10299.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Show full item recordScholars@Duke
Marc A. Sommer
Professor of Biomedical Engineering
We study circuits for cognition. Using a combination of neurophysiology and biomedical
engineering, we focus on the interaction between brain areas during visual perception,
decision-making, and motor planning. Specific projects include the role of frontal
cortex in metacognition, the role of cerebellar-frontal circuits in action timing,
the neural basis of "good enough" decision-making (satisficing), and the neural mechanisms
of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).

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