Author:
BAIR WYETH,O'KEEFE LAWRENCE P.
Abstract
We analyzed the relationship between eye movements
and neuronal responses recorded from area MT in alert monkeys
trained to maintain visual fixation during the presentation
of moving patterns. The monkeys made small saccades which
moved the eyes with velocities that spanned the sensitivity
range of MT neurons. The saccades evoked changes in the
neuronal response that depended upon (1) the level of stimulus-evoked
activity amidst which the saccade occurred and (2) the
direction of the saccade relative to the preferred direction
of the neuron. Most notably, saccades were able to suppress
stimulus-evoked activity when they caused retinal image
flow that opposed the neuron's preference and were
able to elicit a response or enhance weak activity when
they caused flow in the neuron's preferred direction.
On average, the disturbance lasted 40 ms beginning about
40 ms following saccade onset. Using these parameters,
we simulated synthetic spike trains from an imaginary pair
of similarly tuned neurons and determined that the interneuronal
correlation due to saccades should be negligible at all
but the lowest ongoing firing rates. This conclusion was
supported from our data by the observation that response
variance for single MT spike trains was not measurably
reduced during periods of stable gaze compared to periods
when eye movement exceeded a stability criterion (0.1 deg
during 0.5 s). While the intrusions caused by saccades
are too short-lived and infrequent to account for the variability
of MT neuronal response (counter to the finding in V1 of
Gur et al., 1997), the clear directional signal that they
carry in area MT suggests that motion perception is not
blocked during saccades by suppression at early stages
in the visual pathway.
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Subject
Sensory Systems,Physiology
Cited by
161 articles.
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