SACCADE TARGET SELECTION IN THE SUPERIOR COLLICULUS

拟议中的实验是对 跳动靶区的神经基础。这些实验结合了 麦克皮克博士在眼跳和视觉搜索中的注意力研究 从丘脑神经元的录音中试图确定 这些神经元在靶点选择中的作用。这些实验依赖于 关于眼跳潜伏期被发现的启动方法 减少具有相同目标颜色的连续试验。 更改目标颜色会导致延迟增加或 有时是一种不寻常的扫视模式，在这种模式下，扫视指向 朝向旧的颜色被打断，一种新的、正确的扫视 仅在20毫秒暂停后启动。候选人提议 在任务过程中监测丘脑活动，并找出 哪种神经活动对应于出席者的位置 分心器与实际跳动目标的对比。之前的调查人员已经 检查了这类问题，但有更简单和更多的 限制性行为任务。这项提议似乎是一种 与以前的工作相比有所改进，因为延迟和 眼跳的轨迹提供了注意的行为证据 分心的东西。因此，更精确的眼跳分离--以及 与注意力相关的活动成为可能。

The proposed experiments are novel and innovative studies of the neural basis of saccadic target section. The experiments combine McPeek's doctoral work on saccades and attention in visaul search with recordings from collicular neurons in an attempt to determine the role of these neurons in target selection. The experiments rely on a priming method in which saccadic latencies are found to reduce over consecutive trials with the same target color. Changing the target color produces either an increase in latency or sometimes an unusual saccadic pattern in which a saccade directed toward the old color is interrupted and a new, correct saccade initiated after only a 20 msec pause. The candidate proposes to monitor collicular activity during the task and find out the extent to which neural activity corresponds to the location of attended distractors vs. the actual saccadic target. Prior investigators have examined questions of this sort but with simpler and more restrictive behavioral tasks. The proposal would seem to be an improvement over this prior work because the latencies and trajectories of saccades provide behavioral evidence of attention to the distractors. Thus, a more precise dissociation of saccade- and attention-related activity becomes possible.