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Related Experiment Videos

Eye Position Error Influence over "Open-Loop" Smooth Pursuit Initiation.

Antimo Buonocore1,2, Julianne Skinner3,2,4, Ziad M Hafed3,2

  • 1Werner Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, antimo.buonocore@cin.uni-tuebingen.de.

The Journal of Neuroscience : the Official Journal of the Society for Neuroscience
|February 3, 2019
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

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Smooth pursuit eye movements, crucial for tracking targets, are surprisingly adaptable. Even during their initial "open-loop" phase, these eye movements can be modified by visual signals, demonstrating the oculomotor system's flexibility.

Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Oculomotor control
  • Visual-motor integration

Background:

  • Smooth pursuit eye movements enable tracking of moving objects.
  • Initiation of smooth pursuit is traditionally considered an "open-loop" process, lasting up to 100 ms, where new visual motion signals are thought to be unmodifiable.
  • This challenges the concept of privileged short-latency visual access in the oculomotor periphery.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the sensitivity of smooth pursuit initiation to visual inputs during the proposed open-loop interval.
  • To determine if visual signals can influence motor plans during the early stages of smooth pursuit.
  • To examine the effects of transient visual signals on eye movement dynamics and catch-up saccade generation.

Main Methods:

  • Male rhesus macaque monkeys were trained to initiate saccade-free smooth pursuit eye movements.
Keywords:
microsaccadesopen-loopposition errorsmooth pursuit

Related Experiment Videos

  • A transient, instantaneous eye position error signal was injected at various times relative to movement onset.
  • Modulations in eye velocity, acceleration, and catch-up saccade characteristics were analyzed.

    • Main Results:

    • Robust, short-latency modulations in eye velocity and acceleration were observed approximately 50 ms after transient signal occurrence, even during the open-loop phase.
    • The spatial direction of the injected error signal predictably altered eye acceleration (forward errors increased, backward errors decreased).
    • Catch-up saccade frequency and amplitude were also modified around 50 ms post-signal, similar to effects on microsaccades during fixation.

    Conclusions:

    • Smooth pursuit initiation is highly sensitive to visual signals, contradicting the traditional open-loop model.
    • The oculomotor system demonstrates remarkable flexibility, rapidly adjusting eye movements to minimize visual errors.
    • Catch-up saccade generation is reset by visual transients, highlighting the dynamic nature of oculomotor control.