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Updated: Jul 2, 2026

A Large Lateral Craniotomy Procedure for Mesoscale Wide-field Optical Imaging of Brain Activity
Published on: May 7, 2017
Different spatial organizations of saccade related BOLD-activation in parietal and striate cortex
Jochem W Rieger1, Mircea A Schoenfeld, Hans-Jochen Heinze
1Department of Neurology II, Otto-von-Guericke University, Leipzigerstr. 44, D-39120 Magdeburg, Germany. jochem.rieger@med.ovgu.de
Abstract:
Voluntary saccades performed in total darkness provide the opportunity to investigate the brain system active during saccades without confounding effects caused by the saccade induced shifts of the retinal image. Using this approach saccade related activation has been demonstrated not only in parietal but also in striate cortex. Currently no information is available about the reference frame in which this activation is represented in parietal and in striate cortex. However, knowledge about how the brain codes spatial information about saccades in the absence of visual input is potentially relevant to our understanding of visually guided behaviour. The present study combines functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with simultaneous electrooculogram-recordings to provide evidence that volitional saccades executed in total darkness are represented in a retinotopic reference frame in a parietal brain area, the putative homologue of human LIP, and in a head/body centred egocentric reference frame in human V1. The potential co-existence of retinotopic and egocentric space representations in the primary visual cortex indicates that V1 may be involved in visuo-motor integration.
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