Cloherty Shaun L, Mustari Michael J, Rosa Marcello G P, Ibbotson Michael R
Division of Biomedical Science and Biochemistry and ARC Centre of Excellence in Vision Science, Research School of Biology, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia.
Vision Res. 2010 Dec;50(24):2683-91. doi: 10.1016/j.visres.2010.08.020. Epub 2010 Aug 21.
In surveying their visual environment, primates, including humans make frequent rapid eye movements known as saccades. Saccades result in rapid motion of the retinal image and yet this motion is not perceived. We recorded saccade-related changes in neural activity in the dorsal medial superior temporal area (MSTd) of alert macaque monkeys. We show that the spontaneous activity of neurons in MSTd is modulated around the time of saccades. Some cells show considerable suppression of spontaneous activity, while most show early and significant enhancement. While this modulation of spontaneous activity is variable, the concomitant modulation of neural responses evoked by flashed visual stimuli is uniform and stereotypical - visual responses are suppressed for stimuli presented around the time of saccades and enhanced for stimuli presented afterwards. The combined modulation of spontaneous activity and evoked visual responses likely serves to reduce the detectability of peri-saccadic stimuli and promote the perceptual awareness of visual stimuli between saccades.
在观察其视觉环境时，包括人类在内的灵长类动物会频繁进行快速眼动，即扫视。扫视会导致视网膜图像的快速移动，但这种移动却不会被感知到。我们记录了警觉猕猴背内侧颞上区（MSTd）中与扫视相关的神经活动变化。我们发现，MSTd中神经元的自发活动在扫视前后会受到调制。一些细胞的自发活动受到显著抑制，而大多数细胞则表现出早期且显著的增强。虽然这种自发活动的调制是可变的，但由闪光视觉刺激诱发的神经反应的伴随调制却是一致且刻板的——在扫视前后呈现的刺激，其视觉反应会被抑制，而在扫视之后呈现的刺激，其视觉反应会增强。自发活动和诱发视觉反应的联合调制可能有助于降低扫视周围刺激的可检测性，并促进扫视之间视觉刺激的感知觉。
