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Related Experiment Videos

The superior colliculus encodes gaze commands in retinal coordinates.

E M Klier1, H Wang, J D Crawford

  • 1CIHR Group for Action and Perception, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3, Canada.

Nature Neuroscience
|May 23, 2001
PubMed
Summary

The superior colliculus (SC) directs gaze shifts using retinal coordinates, not spatial ones. This eye-centered command is transformed by downstream brain areas for coordinated eye-head movements.

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Ocular motor control
  • Primate research

Background:

  • The superior colliculus (SC) is known to contain a topographic map of visual space.
  • The precise spatial coding of its output for orienting gaze shifts remains debated.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the spatial reference frame used by the superior colliculus (SC) for generating gaze shifts.
  • To determine if the SC codes gaze displacement, gaze direction in space, or gaze direction in retinal coordinates.

Main Methods:

  • Electrical micro-stimulation of the SC in two head-free, non-immobilized monkeys.
  • Analysis of evoked eye-head gaze shifts and their trajectories.
  • Calculation of movement vectors in different spatial coordinate frames.

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Main Results:

  • Micro-stimulation evoked naturalistic eye-head gaze shifts.
  • SC stimulation sites did not code desired gaze displacement or direction in space.
  • Gaze shift trajectories, when analyzed in retinal coordinates, consistently represented fixed vectors.
  • The SC command is eye-centered and further transformed by downstream mechanisms.

Conclusions:

  • The superior colliculus (SC) codes desired gaze direction in retinal coordinates, not spatial coordinates.
  • This eye-centered SC output is a crucial intermediate step, subsequently transformed for coordinated eye-head movements.