Passive eye displacement alters auditory spatial receptive fields of cat superior colliculus neurons

The superior colliculus (SC) is thought to use a set of superimposed, topographically organized neural maps of visual, auditory, somatosensory and motor space to direct the eyes toward novel stimuli. Auditory spatial response fields (SRFs) of SC neurons may change when an animal moves its eyes, presumably to compensate for the resulting misalignment of visual and auditory sensory spatial reference frames, but the mechanisms responsible for these SRF changes remain unknown. Here we report that passive deviation of the eye in anesthetized, paralyzed animals can profoundly affect the auditory responsiveness of SC neurons, but seems insufficient by itself to provide adaptive shifts of auditory SRFs.