Galletti C, Squatrito S, Battaglini P P, Grazia Maioli M
Brain Res. 1984 May 28;301(1):95-110. doi: 10.1016/0006-8993(84)90406-2.
Extracellular recordings were carried out in the primary visual cortex of behaving macaque monkeys. Neurons were activated by moving a visual stimulus across their receptive fields during periods of steady fixation and by moving their receptive fields (by visual tracking) across a motionless visual stimulus, taking care that the velocities of stimulus and eye movements were the same. The total cell population (108 neurons) ws divided into 3 groups according to the cell sensitivity to visual stimulus orientation (non-oriented cell and oriented cells) and to the presence or absence of antagonistic areas in in the receptive fields (oriented cells with antagonistic areas). All the non-oriented cells (n = 14) showed almost the same response to visual stimulation both during steady fixation and during visual tracking. Out of a total number of 86 oriented cells, 77 turned out to be activated by the visual stimulation both during fixation and tracking. Eight oriented cells gave a very weak response or no response at all to visual stimulation during smooth pursuit eye movements and one neuron of the same group showed a greater response during visual tracking than during fixation. Six out of 8 oriented cells with antagonistic areas showed almost the same response to the two types of visual stimulation, while the remaining two neurons showed very weak responses during smooth pursuit eye movements. Our results show that a small percentage (about 10%) of striate neurons in macaque monkeys gave very different responses to the same physical stimulation at retinal level, according to the presence or absence of slow eye movements (smooth pursuit eye movements). The activity of these neurons seems to be related to the real movement of something in the visual world, in spite of the retinal image movement per se.
在行为猕猴的初级视觉皮层进行了细胞外记录。在稳定注视期间，通过在神经元的感受野上移动视觉刺激来激活神经元；在视觉跟踪期间，通过将它们的感受野（通过视觉跟踪）移动到静止的视觉刺激上，同时确保刺激速度和眼球运动速度相同。根据细胞对视觉刺激方向的敏感性（非定向细胞和定向细胞）以及感受野中是否存在拮抗区域（具有拮抗区域的定向细胞），将全部细胞群体（108个神经元）分为3组。所有非定向细胞（n = 14）在稳定注视和视觉跟踪期间对视觉刺激的反应几乎相同。在总共86个定向细胞中，77个在注视和跟踪期间都被视觉刺激激活。8个定向细胞在平稳跟踪眼球运动期间对视觉刺激反应非常微弱或根本没有反应，同一组中的一个神经元在视觉跟踪期间比在注视期间表现出更大的反应。8个具有拮抗区域的定向细胞中有6个对两种类型的视觉刺激反应几乎相同，而其余两个神经元在平稳跟踪眼球运动期间反应非常微弱。我们的结果表明，猕猴纹状神经元中有一小部分（约10%）根据是否存在缓慢眼球运动（平稳跟踪眼球运动），对视网膜水平上相同的物理刺激给出非常不同的反应。尽管存在视网膜图像本身的运动，但这些神经元的活动似乎与视觉世界中物体的实际运动有关。
