Gaze pursuit responses in nucleus reticularis tegmenti pontis of head-unrestrained macaques

Pursuit disorder and saccade dysmetria after caudal fastigial inactivation in the monkey

The caudal fastigial nuclei (cFN) are the output nuclei by which the medio-posterior cerebellum influences the production of saccadic and pursuit eye movements. We investigated the consequences of unilateral inactivation on the pursuit eye movement made immediately after an interceptive saccade toward a centrifugal target. We describe here the effects when the target moved along the horizontal meridian with a 10 or 20°/s speed. After muscimol injection, the monkeys were unable to track the present location of the moving target. During contralesional tracking, the velocity of postsaccadic pursuit was reduced. This slowing was associated with a hypometria of interceptive saccades such that gaze direction always lagged behind the moving target. No correlation was found between the sizes of saccade undershoot and the decreases in pursuit speed. During ipsilesional tracking, the effects on postsaccadic pursuit were variable across the injection sessions, whereas the interceptive saccades were consistently hypermetric. Here also, the ipsilesional pursuit disorder was not correlated with the saccade hypermetria either. The lack of correlation between the sizes of saccade dysmetria and changes of postsaccadic pursuit speed suggests that cFN activity exerts independent influences on the neural processes generating the saccadic and slow eye movements. It also suggests that the cFN is one locus where the synergy between the two motor categories develops in the context of tracking a moving visual target. We explain how the different fastigial output channels can account for these oculomotor tracking disorders. NEW & NOTEWORTHY Inactivation of the caudal fastigial nucleus impairs the ability to track a moving target. The accuracy of interceptive saccades and the velocity of postsaccadic pursuit movements are both altered, but these changes are not correlated. This absence of correlation is not compatible with an impaired common command feeding the circuits producing saccadic and pursuit eye movements. However, it suggests an involvement of caudal fastigial nuclei in their synergy to accurately track a moving target.

Target position relative to the head is essential for predicting head movement during head-free gaze pursuit

Gaze pursuit is the coordinated movement of the eyes and head that allows humans and other foveate animals to track moving objects. The control of smooth pursuit eye movements when the head is restrained is relatively well understood, but how the eyes coordinate with concurrent head movements when the head is free remains unresolved. In this study, we describe behavioral tasks that dissociate head and gaze velocity during head-free pursuit in monkeys. Existing models of gaze pursuit propose that both eye and head movements are driven only by the perceived velocity of the visual target and are therefore unable to account for these data. We show that in addition to target velocity, the positions of the eyes in the orbits and the retinal position of the target are important factors for predicting head movement during pursuit. When the eyes are already near their limits, further pursuit in that direction will be accompanied by more head movement than when the eyes are centered in the orbits, even when target velocity is the same. The step-ramp paradigm, often used in pursuit tasks, produces larger or smaller head movements, depending on the direction of the position step, while gaze pursuit velocity is insensitive to this manipulation. Using these tasks, we can reliably evoke head movements with peak velocities much faster than the target's velocity. Under these circumstances, the compensatory eye movements, which are often called counterproductive since they rotate the eyes in the opposite direction, are essential to maintaining accurate gaze velocity.

Short-term saccadic adaptation in the macaque monkey: a binocular mechanism

Saccadic eye movements are rapid transfers of gaze between objects of interest. Their duration is too short for the visual system to be able to follow their progress in time. Adaptive mechanisms constantly recalibrate the saccadic responses by detecting how close the landings are to the selected targets. The double-step saccadic paradigm is a common method to simulate alterations in saccadic gain. While the subject is responding to a first target shift, a second shift is introduced in the middle of this movement, which masks it from visual detection. The error in landing introduced by the second shift is interpreted by the brain as an error in the programming of the initial response, with gradual gain changes aimed at compensating the apparent sensorimotor mismatch. A second shift applied dichoptically to only one eye introduces disconjugate landing errors between the two eyes. A monocular adaptive system would independently modify only the gain of the eye exposed to the second shift in order to reestablish binocular alignment. Our results support a binocular mechanism. A version-based saccadic adaptive process detects postsaccadic version errors and generates compensatory conjugate gain alterations. A vergence-based saccadic adaptive process detects postsaccadic disparity errors and generates corrective nonvisual disparity signals that are sent to the vergence system to regain binocularity. This results in striking dynamical similarities between visually driven combined saccade-vergence gaze transfers, where the disparity is given by the visual targets, and the double-step adaptive disconjugate responses, where an adaptive disparity signal is generated internally by the saccadic system.

The interaction of visual, vestibular and extra-retinal mechanisms in the control of head and gaze during head-free pursuit

Non-technical summary

In everyday life, we encounter moving objects and to follow them, we have developed smooth pursuit eye movements. When you rotate your head, the vestibulo-ocular reflex is activated, which generates compensatory smooth eye movements so your eyes remain focussed on the current object of interest. Previous work has shown that you can overcome this reflex to follow a moving object with your eyes and head together, but this normally requires visual feedback. The current study shows that under certain circumstances, for example when you can anticipate the motion of an object, you can use predictive mechanisms in the brain to supplement your pursuit movements to continue to follow the object if it disappears. We demonstrate that you can sample and store brief visual motion to pursue an unseen moving object. Additionally, you can more accurately follow it with your eyes and head together, compared to just using your eyes.

Abstract

The ability to co-ordinate the eyes and head when tracking moving objects is important for survival. Tracking with eyes alone is controlled by both visually dependent and extra-retinal mechanisms, the latter sustaining eye movement during target extinction. We investigated how the extra-retinal component develops at the beginning of randomised responses during head-free pursuit and how it interacts with the vestibulo-ocular reflex (VOR). Subjects viewed horizontal step-ramp stimuli which occurred in pairs of identical velocity; velocity was randomised between pairs, ranging from ±5 to 40 deg s⁻¹. In the first of each pair (short-ramp extinction) the target was visible for only 150 ms. In the second (initial extinction), after a randomised fixation period, the target was extinguished at motion onset, remaining invisible for 750 ms before reappearing for the last 200 ms of motion. Subjects used motion information acquired in the short-ramp extinction presentation to track the target from the start of unseen motion in the initial extinction presentation, using extra-retinal drive to generate smooth gaze and head movements scaled to target velocity. Gaze velocity rose more slowly than when visually driven, but had similar temporal development in head-free and head-fixed conditions. The difference in eye-in-head velocity between head-fixed and head-free conditions was closely related to head velocity throughout its trajectory, implying that extra-retinal drive was responsible for countermanding the VOR in the absence of vision. Thus, the VOR apparently remained active during head-free pursuit with near-unity gain. Evidence also emerged that head movements are not directly controlled by visual input, but by internal estimation mechanisms similar to those controlling gaze.