Coding of smooth eye movements in three-dimensional space by frontal cortex
Coding of smooth eye movements in three-dimensional space by frontal cortex
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DOI：
10.1038/nature00953
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发表时间：
2002-09-12
期刊：
影响因子：
64.8
通讯作者：
Peterson, BW
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Fukushima, K;Yamanobe, T;Peterson, BW
通过发展高敏锐度的中心凹，具有额眼的灵长类动物已经获得了使用双眼运动来跟踪空间中移动的小物体的能力(1)。平滑追踪系统将两只眼睛朝同一方向移动以跟踪前平面内的运动(正面追踪)，而聚焦系统则以相反的方向移动左眼和右眼以跟踪朝向或远离观察者的目标(聚焦跟踪)。在大脑皮层和脑干中，与集中眼球运动相关的信号以及引发它们的视网膜视差和模糊信号独立于与额叶追逐相关的信号进行编码(2-6)。在这里，我们展示了这些类型的信号以完全不同的方式表示在前部眼场的平滑追踪区(7-11)。前额眼场的神经元在前额追踪和聚焦跟踪过程中都有很强的调制，这导致了眼球运动的三维笛卡尔表示。我们认为，大脑创造了这种截然不同的中间表征，以允许这些神经元作为系统的一部分发挥作用，该系统使灵长类能够跟踪和操纵在三维空间中移动的物体。
Through the development of a high-acuity fovea, primates with frontal eyes have acquired the ability to use binocular eye movements to track small objects moving in space(1). The smooth-pursuit system moves both eyes in the same direction to track movement in the frontal plane (frontal pursuit), whereas the vergence system moves left and right eyes in opposite directions to track targets moving towards or away from the observer (vergence tracking). In the cerebral cortex and brainstem, signals related to vergence eye movements-and the retinal disparity and blur signals that elicit them-are coded independently of signals related to frontal pursuit(2-6). Here we show that these types of signal are represented in a completely different way in the smooth-pursuit region of the frontal eye fields(7-11). Neurons of the frontal eye field modulate strongly during both frontal pursuit and vergence tracking, which results in three-dimensional cartesian representations of eye movements. We propose that the brain creates this distinctly different intermediate representation to allow these neurons to function as part of a system that enables primates to track and manipulate objects moving in three-dimensional space.