RESEARCH/TRAINING IN OCULAR MOTOR NEUROPHYSIOLOGY

我们提出了一个包括培训和研究的项目

We propose a program that includes both training and research for a Neurologies who has completed residency and whose career goals require training in basis research on motor systems. TRAINING will consist of a firm hands-on grounding in research on the ocular motor system as well as participation in the courses and functions of the Neuroscience Graduate Program at UCSF that are relevant for work on the central nervous system. It will encompass the relevant courses given at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories, and selected short-courses at meetings such as the Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. RESEARCH will involve studies of visually-guided motor learning (plasticity) in the vestibulo-ocular reflex (VOR) of behaving monkeys. The VOR is a simple form of movement whose function is to ensure a stable retinal image during head rotations by generating compensatory eye movements. As an open-loop control system, it requires independent calibration. When the visual input associated with head movement is altered for example by magnifying or reducing spectacles, the VOR undergoes long-term adaptive changes, so as to reduce the degree of slip retinal images during head turns. The long-term goal of the research is to understand the neural basis for motor learning in the VOR. An understanding of this process in the VOR should provide insights into the learning of motor skills in general, and may be useful in designing therapies for adults who must relearn motor skills after strokes or other brain damage. The proposed experiments will evoke motor learning in the VOR AND look for changes in the responses of CNS neurons in VOR pathways to single-shock electrical stimuli applied to the vestibular apparatus. Neurons also will be categorized according to how they discharge during eye movement, and according to whether they are inhibited at monosynaptic latencies by single-shock electrical stimulation of the flocculus of the cerebellum. Attention will focus on 3 groups of cells: 1) interneurons in the disynaptic VOR pathways. 2) a separate group of cells that is inhibited from the flocculus and 3) purkinje cells in the flocculus. Conducting the same experiment on the same groups of cells before and after motor learning in the VOR will reveal specific neurons that show a change in the short-latency responses to single-shock electrical stimulation of the vestibular apparatus. Performing the experiment on several groups of cells should enable us to identify the site of motor learning the VOR.