Section Neurophysics, Donders Centre for Neuroscience, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Commun Biol. 2023 Sep 9;6(1):927. doi: 10.1038/s42003-023-05305-z.
The midbrain superior colliculus is a crucial sensorimotor stage for programming and generating saccadic eye-head gaze shifts. Although it is well established that superior colliculus cells encode a neural command that specifies the amplitude and direction of the upcoming gaze-shift vector, there is controversy about the role of the firing-rate dynamics of these neurons during saccades. In our earlier work, we proposed a simple quantitative model that explains how the recruited superior colliculus population may specify the detailed kinematics (trajectories and velocity profiles) of head-restrained saccadic eye movements. We here show that the same principles may apply to a wide range of saccadic eye-head gaze shifts with strongly varying kinematics, despite the substantial nonlinearities and redundancy in programming and execute rapid goal-directed eye-head gaze shifts to peripheral targets. Our findings could provide additional evidence for an important role of the superior colliculus in the optimal control of saccades.
中脑上丘是一个用于编程和生成扫视眼-头注视转移的关键感觉运动阶段。尽管已经确定上丘细胞编码了一个神经命令，该命令指定了即将到来的注视转移矢量的幅度和方向，但关于这些神经元在扫视期间的放电率动态的作用仍存在争议。在我们之前的工作中，我们提出了一个简单的定量模型，解释了如何招募上丘群体来指定头固定扫视眼运动的详细运动学（轨迹和速度曲线）。我们在这里表明，尽管在编程和执行快速指向目标的眼-头注视转移时有很大的非线性和冗余性，但相同的原则可能适用于具有广泛变化运动学的各种扫视眼-头注视转移。我们的发现可以为上丘在扫视的最佳控制中的重要作用提供额外的证据。
