During smooth pursuit eye movements, stimuli other than the pursuit target move across the retina, and this might affect their detectability. We measured detection thresholds for vertically oriented Gabor stimuli with different temporal frequencies (1, 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, and 24 Hz) of the sinusoids. Observers kept fixation on a small target spot that was either stationary or moved horizontally a...

Pursuit and saccades almost always select the same target. Is this the results of a common selection process or does smooth pursuit obligatorily follow the stimulus targeted by saccades? To address this question, we used microstimulation of the primate superior colliculus (SC) to redirect the eyes from a selected pursuit target to a distracter moving in the opposite direction. During each trial...

We recorded the activity of fixation neurons in the frontal eye field (FEF) in trained monkeys and analyzed their activity during smooth pursuit eye movements. Fixation neurons were densely located in the area of the FEF in the caudal part of the arcuate gyrus facing the inferior arcuate sulcus where focal electrical stimulation suppressed the generation of saccades and smooth pursuit in bilate...

Periarcuate frontal cortex is involved in the control of smooth pursuit eye movements, but its role remains unclear. To better understand the control of pursuit by the "frontal pursuit area" (FPA), we applied electrical microstimulation when the monkeys were performing a variety of oculomotor tasks. In agreement with previous studies, electrical stimulation consisting of a train of 50-microA pu...

For small objects moving smoothly in space close to the observer, smooth pursuit and vergence eye movements maintain target images near the foveae to insure high-resolution processing of visual signals about moving objects. Signals for both systems must be synthesized for pursuit-in-three-dimensions (3D). Recent studies have shown that responses of the majority of pursuit neurons in the frontal...