Bbrainstem control of slow ocular drifts during gaze fixation

脑干控制凝视过程中缓慢的眼球漂移

• 批准号: 355031918
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Ziad Hafed, Ph.D.
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Werner Reichardt-Centrum für integrative Neurowissenschaften (CIN)
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Units
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2016-12-31 至 2020-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/355031918?language=en
• 关键词: Bbrainstem; control; slow; ocular; drifts

During gaze fixation, tiny eye movements, including slow ocular drifts and microsaccades, continuously occur. Even though these eye movements have been known to exist for several decades, both their mechanisms of generation and their impacts on vision, perception, and cognition remain to be heavily under-investigated. During the past ~15 years, research on microsaccades has experienced a significant revival, especially in terms of neural mechanisms, but the mechanisms for slow ocular drifts remain to be a major research frontier. The main goal of our research proposal is to uncover the neural mechanisms for the control of slow ocular drifts at the level of the brainstem. We will investigate the causal role of brainstem omnipause neurons (OPNs) and superior colliculus (SC) in both drift and microsaccade control and coordination. We hypothesize that SC and OPNs engage synergistically such that SC activity provides a position estimate for ocular drifts and OPN activity influences eye velocity. The transformative aspects of our proposal are twofold. First, we will uncover hitherto unknown neurophysiological mechanisms associated with the smallest of eye movements. Second, given that a significant portion of systems neuroscience research with awake, behaving subjects is conducted under gaze fixation conditions, our work will clarify how much of behavioural and neural effects observed in such research may be a function of subliminal oculomotor behaviour. For example, ocular drifts occur incessantly and thus keep translating retinal images. If these eye movements turn out to be centrally controlled and not random, then their occurrence may contribute to the results of a variety of experiments on visual processing. Based on the outcome of our previous work with microsaccades, we anticipate that several classic phenomena in systems neuroscience may likewise eventually be cast in a different, yet intriguing, light as a result of our proposed research on ocular drifts.

在注视过程中，微小的眼球运动，包括缓慢的眼球漂移和微扫视，不断发生。尽管这些眼球运动已经存在了几十年，但它们的产生机制及其对视觉、感知和认知的影响仍未得到充分研究。在过去的15年里，微跳的研究有了明显的复苏，特别是在神经机制方面，但慢眼漂的机制仍然是一个重要的研究前沿。我们的研究计划的主要目标是揭示在脑干水平控制慢眼漂移的神经机制。我们将研究脑干全顶神经元（OPNs）和上丘（SC）在漂移和微跳控制和协调中的因果作用。我们假设SC和OPN协同作用，使得SC活动提供了眼漂移的位置估计，而OPN活动影响眼速度。我们的提议具有两方面的变革意义。首先，我们将揭示迄今为止未知的与最小眼球运动相关的神经生理机制。其次，考虑到相当一部分的系统神经科学研究是在注视注视的条件下进行的，我们的工作将澄清在此类研究中观察到的行为和神经效应有多少可能是阈下动眼肌行为的功能。例如，眼球漂移不断发生，因此不断翻译视网膜图像。如果这些眼球运动被证明是由中央控制的，而不是随机的，那么它们的出现可能有助于各种视觉处理实验的结果。基于我们之前对微跳的研究结果，我们预计系统神经科学中的几个经典现象最终可能会以不同的方式呈现，但有趣的是，作为我们对眼球漂移的研究的结果。