Diencephalic Mechanisms of Visuomotor Integration

描述(由申请人提供)：关于在典型视觉场景中往哪里看的决定取决于个人刺激和当前行为目标的相对显着性。到目前为止，大多数关于视觉定向认知控制的研究都是针对额叶皮质的。然而，越来越多的证据表明，与工作记忆和决策有关的信号严重依赖于额叶皮质和皮质下结构(如基底节、小脑和丘脑)之间的相互作用。丘脑在这些皮质下结构中是独一无二的；除了向皮质提供直接输入外，其组成的核团还介导了基底节和小脑对各自皮质靶点的影响。尽管中央丘脑处于重要的解剖学位置，但人们对中央丘脑所代表的信息的性质几乎一无所知。目前的实验试图完全表征中央丘脑对与产生视觉引导的眼跳运动相关的认知因素的表征。这项拟议的研究将首次考察丘脑中央核团及其介导的皮质下-皮质下相互作用对目标定向眼跳运动的认知控制的潜在重要性。通过这样做，这些实验将有助于确定视觉运动认知的基本神经基础。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Decisions about where to look within a typical visual scene are governed by the relative salience of individual stimuli and current behavioral objectives. To date, the majority of studies examining the cognitive control of visual orienting have targeted frontal cortex. However, there is growing evidence to suggest that signals related to working memory and decision-making are critically dependent on interactions between frontal cortex and subcortical structures such as the basal ganglia, cerebellum, and thalamus. Thalamus is unique among these subcortical structures; in addition to providing direct input to cortex, its constituent nuclei mediate the influences of both the basal ganglia and cerebellum on their respective cortical targets. Despite its critical anatomical position, virtually nothing is known about the nature of the information represented in central thalamus. The current experiments seek to fully characterize the central thalamic representations of cognitive factors relevant for producing visually-guided saccadic eye movements. The proposed studies will be the first to examine the potential importance of central thalamic nuclei, and the subcortical-cortical interactions they mediate, to the cognitive control of goal-directed saccadic eye movements. In doing so, these experiments will help to define the essential neural substrates for visuomotor cognition.