Pretectal jerk neuron activity during saccadic eye movements and visual stimulations in the cat

The activity of 'jerk neurons' was recorded extracellularly in the pretectum of the awake cat. The characteristic response of jerk neurons was a short, high-frequency burst that occurred after fast movements ('jerks') of a large, structured visual stimulus, during saccadic eye movements in the light, and after 'on' or 'off' visual stimulation. Mean burst latency to pure visual 'jerks' was 50 ms, whereas it was 30 ms to saccadic eye movements. Bursts were found to be stereotyped; the highest discharge rate was always at burst onset. Jerk neurons were not selective for stimulus parameters (such as movement amplitude or direction) except that in some neurons a weak correlation between stimulus velocity and discharge frequency was found. During saccades in the dark, clear bursts were only rarely found. In about half of the neurons, however, there was a slight but significant increase in the number of spikes above spontaneous frequency. Visual receptive fields were very large (46 degrees horizontal and 35 degrees vertical extent, on average). Nevertheless, the pretectal jerk neurons showed a rough retinotopic order, which was in accordance with the published retinotopy of the pretectum. Jerk neurons were found throughout the whole superficial pretectum, but preferentially in an area that corresponds to the nucleus of the optic tract (NOT) and the nucleus pretectalis posterior (NPP). Saccades were elicited by electrical stimulations at the sites where jerk neurons were recorded. The direction of the elicited saccades depended strongly on the pretectal stimulation site. A possible role of the jerk neurons as a visuomotor relay to elicit saccades or to modulate perception and attention is discussed.