The ocular motor system consists of three nerves which innervate six muscles to control eye movements. In humans, defective development of this system leads to eye movement disorders, such as Duane Retraction Syndrome, which can result from mutations in the α2-chimaerin signaling molecule. We have used the zebrafish to model the role of α2-chimaerin during development of the ocular motor system...

Studies of manual and digital sequence learning indicate that motor memories continue to be processed after training has ended, following a succession of identifiable steps. However, it is not known whether this offline memory processing constitutes a basic feature of motor learning and generalizes to the implicit learning of a sequence of eye movements. To assess this hypothesis, we have creat...

While it is known that salient distractors often capture covert and overt attention, it is unclear whether salience signals that stem from magnocellular visual input have a more dominant role in oculomotor capture than those that result from parvocellular input. Because of the direct anatomical connections between the magnocellular pathway and the superior colliculus, salience signals generated...

To investigate functional differences between the rostral and caudal parts of the dorsal premotor cortex (PMd), we first examined the effects of intracortical microstimulation (ICMS) while monkeys were performing oculomotor and limb motor tasks or while they were at rest. We found that saccades were evoked from the rostral part (PMdr) whereas ICMS in the caudal part (PMdc) predominantly produce...

Frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) often overlaps clinically with corticobasal syndrome (CBS) and progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), both of which have prominent eye movement abnormalities. To investigate the ability of oculomotor performance to differentiate between FTLD, Alzheimer's disease, CBS and PSP, saccades and smooth pursuit were measured in three FTLD subtypes, including 24 i...

Understanding visual experience has long challenged the best of human minds, from the Ancient Greeks’ interest in optics to the study of visual perception by contemporary psychologists and neuroscientists. Today’s scientific study of perception seeks to understand the nature of our experience in terms of the underlying mechanisms by which it occurs. This text is the first to emphasize the role ...

Visual scan paths exhibit complex, stochastic dynamics. Even during visual fixation, the eye is in constant motion. Fixational drift and tremor are thought to reflect fluctuations in the persistent neural activity of neural integrators in the oculomotor brainstem, which integrate sequences of transient saccadic velocity signals into a short term memory of eye position. Despite intensive researc...

The central region of the human retina, the fovea, provides high-acuity vision. The oculomotor system continually brings targets of interest into the fovea via ballistic eye movements (saccades). Thus, the fovea serves both as the locus for fixations and as the oculomotor reference for saccades. This highly automated process of foveation is functionally critical to vision and is observed from i...

BACKGROUND Persons with Parkinson disease (PD) experience turning difficulty, often leading to freezing of gait and falls. Visual information plays a significant role in locomotion and turning, and while the effects of deep brain stimulation (DBS) on oculomotor function have been well documented, the effects of DBS on oculomotor function during turning and on turning itself have yet to be fully...

Strenuous exercise can result in an inability of the central nervous system to drive skeletal muscle effectively, a phenomenon known as central fatigue. The impact of central fatigue on the oculomotor system is currently unexplored. Fatigue that originates in the central nervous system may be related to perturbations in the synthesis and metabolism of several neurotransmitters. In this study we...