The Neural Control of Disconjugate Saccades

为了在三维空间中准确地观察近目标和远目标，有关相对深度的信息从视觉皮质发送到脑干的运动控制中心，后者进而产生适当的运动命令来移动眼睛。然而，令人惊讶的是，如何利用视觉皮质提供的深度信息来精确地将每只眼睛对准视觉目标是非常有争议的。因此，这个项目的目标是了解大脑如何控制眼球运动，以准确地观察近处和远处的物体。我们之前的实验提供了令人信服的证据，证明脑干眼跳发生器长期以来被认为是纯粹共轭运动前驱动的来源，实际上提供了时间上合适的会聚信息来驱动近目标和远目标之间的快速眼跳运动(即分离眼跳)。事实上，大多数神经元动态编码单个眼睛的运动，而它们随时间变化的放电编码产生准确的错位眼跳所需的驱动力。

To accurately look between near and far targets in 3-dimensional space, information about relative depth is sent from the visual cortex to the motor control centers in the brainstem, which in turn generate appropriate motor commands to move the eyes. Surprisingly, however, how the depth information supplied by the visual cortex is used to precisely aim each eye on a visual target is highly controversial. Accordingly, the objective of this project is to understand how the brain controls eye movements to accurately look between near and far objects. Our previous experiments provided compelling evidence that the brainstem saccadic generator, which was long considered a source of purely conjugate premotor drive, in fact provides temporally appropriate vergence information to drive rapid saccadic eye movements between near and far targets (i.e., disjunctive saccades). Indeed, the majority neurons dynamically encode the movement of an individual eye, and their time-varying discharges encode the drive required to produce accurate disconjugate saccades.