Dynamic ensemble coding of saccades in the monkey superior colliculus

Noradrenergic modulation of saccades in Parkinson's disease

Noradrenaline is a powerful modulator of cognitive processes, including action decisions underlying saccadic control. Changes in saccadic eye movements are common across neurodegenerative diseases of ageing, including Parkinson's disease. With growing interest in noradrenergic treatment potential for non-motor symptoms in Parkinson's disease, the temporal precision of oculomotor function is advantageous to assess the effects of this modulation. Here, we studied the effect of 40 mg atomoxetine, a noradrenaline reuptake inhibitor, in 19 people with idiopathic Parkinson's disease using a single dose, randomized double-blind, crossover, placebo-controlled design. Twenty-five healthy adult participants completed the assessments to provide normative data. Participants performed prosaccade and antisaccade tasks. The latency, velocity and accuracy of saccades, and resting pupil diameter, were measured. Increased pupil diameter on the drug confirmed its expected effect on the locus coeruleus ascending arousal system. Atomoxetine altered key aspects of saccade performance: prosaccade latencies were faster and the saccadic main sequence was normalized. These changes were accompanied by increased antisaccade error rates on the drug. Together, these findings suggest a shift in the speed-accuracy trade-off for visuomotor decisions in response to noradrenergic treatment. Our results provide new evidence to substantiate a role for noradrenergic modulation of saccades, and based on known circuitry, we advance the hypothesis that this reflects modulation at the level of the locus coeruleus-superior colliculus pathway. Given the potential for noradrenergic treatment of non-motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease and related conditions, the oculomotor system can support the assessment of cognitive effects without limb-motor confounds on task performance.

Pathways for Naturalistic Looking Behavior in Primate I: Behavioral Characteristics and Brainstem Circuits

Organisms control their visual worlds by moving their eyes, heads, and bodies. This control of "gaze" or "looking" is key to survival and intelligence, but our investigation of the underlying neural mechanisms in natural conditions is hindered by technical limitations. Recent advances have enabled measurement of both brain and behavior in freely moving animals in complex environments, expanding on historical head-fixed laboratory investigations. We juxtapose looking behavior as traditionally measured in the laboratory against looking behavior in naturalistic conditions, finding that behavior changes when animals are free to move or when stimuli have depth or sound. We specifically focus on the brainstem circuits driving gaze shifts and gaze stabilization. The overarching goal of this review is to reconcile historical understanding of the differential neural circuits for different "classes" of gaze shift with two inconvenient truths. (1) "classes" of gaze behavior are artificial. (2) The neural circuits historically identified to control each "class" of behavior do not operate in isolation during natural behavior. Instead, multiple pathways combine adaptively and non-linearly depending on individual experience. While the neural circuits for reflexive and voluntary gaze behaviors traverse somewhat independent brainstem and spinal cord circuits, both can be modulated by feedback, meaning that most gaze behaviors are learned rather than hardcoded. Despite this flexibility, there are broadly enumerable neural pathways commonly adopted among primate gaze systems. Parallel pathways which carry simultaneous evolutionary and homeostatic drives converge in superior colliculus, a layered midbrain structure which integrates and relays these volitional signals to brainstem gaze-control circuits.

Eyeball translations affect saccadic eye movements beyond brainstem control

Vision requires that we rotate our eyes frequently to look at informative structures in the scene. Eye movements are planned by the brain but their execution depends on the mechanical properties of the oculomotor plant, that is, the arrangement of eyeball position, muscle insertions, and pulley locations. Therefore, the biomechanics of rotations is sensitive to eyeball translation because it changes muscle levers. Eyeball translations are little researched as they are difficult to measure with conventional techniques. Here, we investigated the effects of eyeball translation on the coordination of eyeball rotation by high-speed MRI recordings of saccadic eye movements during blinks, which are known to produce strong translations. We found that saccades during blinks massively overshoot their targets and that these overshoots occur in a transient fashion such that the gaze is back on target at the time the blink ends. These dynamic overshoots were tightly coupled to the eyeball translation, both in time and in size. Saccades made without blinks were also accompanied by small amounts of transient eyeball retraction, the size of which scaled with saccade amplitude. These findings demonstrate a complex combination of rotation and translation of the eye. The mechanical consequences of eyeball translation on oculomotor control should be considered along with the neural implementation in the brainstem to understand the generation of eye movements and their disorders.NEW & NOTEWORTHY We found that saccades during blinks can massively overshoot their target when the eyeball is retracted. Our data imply that the overshoots are not part of the saccade plan prepared in the brainstem, but instead a consequence of the altered biomechanics resulting from concurrent eyeball translation and rotation. To our best knowledge, this is the first direct observation of dynamic properties of the oculomotor plant altering the execution of rotational eye movements.

Neural encoding of instantaneous kinematics of eye-head gaze shifts in monkey superior Colliculus

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.

Ventral premotor cortex encodes task relevant features during eye and head movements

Visual exploration of the environment is achieved through gaze shifts or coordinated movements of the eyes and the head. The kinematics and contributions of each component can be decoupled to fit the context of the required behavior, such as redirecting the visual axis without moving the head or rotating the head without changing the line of sight. A neural controller of these effectors, therefore, must show code relating to multiple muscle groups, and it must also differentiate its code based on context. In this study we tested whether the ventral premotor cortex (PMv) in monkey exhibits a population code relating to various features of eye and head movements. We constructed three different behavioral tasks or contexts, each with four variables to explore whether PMv modulates its activity in accordance with these factors. We found that task related population code in PMv differentiates between all task related features and conclude that PMv carries information about task relevant features during eye and head movements. Furthermore, this code represents both lower-level (effector and movement direction) and higher-level (context) information.

Dynamic control of eye-head gaze shifts by a spiking neural network model of the superior colliculus

INTRODUCTION

To reorient gaze (the eye's direction in space) towards a target is an overdetermined problem, as infinitely many combinations of eye- and head movements can specify the same gaze-displacement vector. Yet, behavioral measurements show that the primate gaze-control system selects a specific contribution of eye- and head movements to the saccade, which depends on the initial eye-in-head orientation. Single-unit recordings in the primate superior colliculus (SC) during head-unrestrained gaze shifts have further suggested that cells may encode the instantaneous trajectory of a desired straight gaze path in a feedforward way by the total cumulative number of spikes in the neural population, and that the instantaneous gaze kinematics are thus determined by the neural firing rates. The recordings also indicated that the latter is modulated by the initial eye position. We recently proposed a conceptual model that accounts for many of the observed properties of eye-head gaze shifts and on the potential role of the SC in gaze control.

METHODS

Here, we extend and test the model by incorporating a spiking neural network of the SC motor map, the output of which drives the eye-head motor control circuitry by linear cumulative summation of individual spike effects of each recruited SC neuron. We propose a simple neural mechanism on SC cells that explains the modulatory influence of feedback from an initial eye-in-head position signal on their spiking activity. The same signal also determines the onset delay of the head movement with respect to the eye. Moreover, the downstream eye- and head burst generators were taken to be linear, as our earlier work had indicated that much of the non-linear main-sequence kinematics of saccadic eye movements may be due to neural encoding at the collicular level, rather than at the brainstem.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

We investigate how the spiking activity of the SC population drives gaze to the intended target location within a dynamic local gaze-velocity feedback circuit that yields realistic eye- and head-movement kinematics and dynamic SC gaze-movement fields.

Timing and kinematics of horizontal within-blink saccades measured using EOG

Eye blinks are the brief closures of the lid. They are accompanied by a co-contraction of the eye muscles that temporarily pulls the whole eyeball back into its socket. When blinks occur together with execution of saccadic gaze shifts, they interfere with the saccadic premotor circuit, causing these within-blink saccades to be slower than normal and also time-locked to blinks. In order to analyse the trajectory of within-blink saccades, the subtraction of the entangled blink-related eye movement is required. Here we propose a combination of principal component analysis (PCA) and a regression model to subtract the blink-related component of the eye movement based on the respective blink metrics. We used electrooculography (EOG) to measure eye and lid movements of twelve participants who performed saccades with and without blinks. We found that within-blink saccades are slower than without-blink saccades and are tightly coupled in time to blink onset. Surprisingly, in some participants we observed large dynamic overshoots of up to 15° for saccades of only 5° amplitude. This finding challenges the current view that within-blink saccades are programmed as slow, but straight, saccades. We hypothesise that the dynamic overshoots could either be attributed to inhibition of omnipause neurons during blinks, the simultaneous co-contraction of extraocular muscles or a combination of both.

A spiking neural network model of the Superior Colliculus that is robust to changes in the spatial-temporal input

Previous studies have indicated that the location of a large neural population in the Superior Colliculus (SC) motor map specifies the amplitude and direction of the saccadic eye-movement vector, while the saccade trajectory and velocity profile are encoded by the population firing rates. We recently proposed a simple spiking neural network model of the SC motor map, based on linear summation of individual spike effects of each recruited neuron, which accounts for many of the observed properties of SC cells in relation to the ensuing eye movement. However, in the model, the cortical input was kept invariant across different saccades. Electrical microstimulation and reversible lesion studies have demonstrated that the saccade properties are quite robust against large changes in supra-threshold SC activation, but that saccade amplitude and peak eye-velocity systematically decrease at low input strengths. These features were not accounted for by the linear spike-vector summation model. Here we show that the model’s input projection strengths and intra-collicular lateral connections can be tuned to generate saccades and neural spiking patterns that closely follow the experimental results.

Speed-accuracy tradeoffs influence the main sequence of saccadic eye movements

Several studies have proposed that an optimal speed-accuracy tradeoff underlies the stereotyped relationship between amplitude, duration and peak velocity of saccades (main sequence). To test this theory, we asked 8 participants to make saccades to Gaussian-blurred spots and manipulated the task's accuracy constraints by varying target size (1, 3, and 5°). The largest targets indeed yielded more endpoint scatter (and lower gains) than the smallest targets, although this effect subsided with target eccentricity. The main sequence depended on several interacting factors: saccade latency, saccade gain and target size. Early saccades, which were faster than amplitude-matched late saccades, followed the target-size dependency one would expect from a speed-accuracy tradeoff process. They had higher peak velocities and shorter durations for larger targets than for smaller targets. For late saccades, however, the opposite was found. Deviations from the main sequence also covaried with saccade gain, in line with the idea that motor noise underlies part of the endpoint variability. Thus, our data provide partial evidence that the saccadic system weighs the detrimental effects of motor noise on saccade accuracy against movement duration and speed, but other factors also modulate the kinematics. We discuss the possible involvement of parallel saccade pathways to account for our findings.

Properties of rapid eye movements

This chapter describes the metrics and kinematics of saccades and quick phases of nystagmus, including microsaccades and large eye-head saccades. Small saccades often display dynamic overshoot, predominantly in the abducting eye. Although the function of these overshoots is unclear, the return movement is saccadic in nature. The saccade kinematics can be quantified by stereotyped relations between amplitude, duration, peak eye velocity, and peak acceleration, which vary somewhat with the initial eye position and saccade direction (centripetal vs centrifugal), possibly due to ocular plant characteristics. Saccades in a structured light environment are considerably faster than when executed in total darkness, although the origin for this facilitation is not known. The horizontal and vertical components of slant saccades are coupled, approximately matching their durations, for which possible underlying neural mechanisms are discussed. The chapter closes with a cross-species comparison of saccade characteristics.

Modelling 3D saccade generation by feedforward optimal control

An interesting problem for the human saccadic eye-movement system is how to deal with the degrees-of-freedom problem: the six extra-ocular muscles provide three rotational degrees of freedom, while only two are needed to point gaze at any direction. Measurements show that 3D eye orientations during head-fixed saccades in far-viewing conditions lie in Listing’s plane (LP), in which the eye’s cyclotorsion is zero (Listing’s law, LL). Moreover, while saccades are executed as single-axis rotations around a stable eye-angular velocity axis, they follow straight trajectories in LP. Another distinctive saccade property is their nonlinear main-sequence dynamics: the affine relationship between saccade size and movement duration, and the saturation of peak velocity with amplitude. To explain all these properties, we developed a computational model, based on a simplified and upscaled robotic prototype of an eye with 3 degrees of freedom, driven by three independent motor commands, coupled to three antagonistic elastic muscle pairs. As the robotic prototype was not intended to faithfully mimic the detailed biomechanics of the human eye, we did not impose specific prior mechanical constraints on the ocular plant that could, by themselves, generate Listing’s law and the main-sequence. Instead, our goal was to study how these properties can emerge from the application of optimal control principles to simplified eye models. We performed a numerical linearization of the nonlinear system dynamics around the origin using system identification techniques, and developed open-loop controllers for 3D saccade generation. Applying optimal control to the simulated model, could reproduce both Listing’s law and and the main-sequence. We verified the contribution of different terms in the cost optimization functional to realistic 3D saccade behavior, and identified four essential terms: total energy expenditure by the motors, movement duration, gaze accuracy, and the total static force exerted by the muscles during fixation. Our findings suggest that Listing’s law, as well as the saccade dynamics and their trajectories, may all emerge from the same common mechanism that aims to optimize speed-accuracy trade-off for saccades, while minimizing the total muscle force during eccentric fixation.

Saccades are rapid eye movements that humans and other animals perform three to four times per second to scan and perceive the environment around them. These movements orient the eye in space with high precision and in a highly stereotyped fashion. Existing studies on animal models advocate that both mechanical and neuronal functions play an important role in the control of the saccades, but some facts are still not fully understood due to difficulties in experimenting and measuring the variables in living animals. Instead, robots are computational and physical models of reality that expose all its variables and can be programmed in interpretable ways. We have built a robotic model of an artificial eye containing the basic ingredients of human eyes: full 3D rotations, viscous friction and 6 muscle-like actuators connected to the eyeball in a geometry similar to the biological system. By synthesizing robotic eye control systems we found that important characteristics of the movements become similar to human saccades when the control relies on few simple fundamental principles: the maximization of saccade accuracy and the minimization of saccade duration, energy in control, and force in the muscles during fixation.

Instantaneous movement-unrelated midbrain activity modifies ongoing eye movements

At any moment in time, new information is sampled from the environment and interacts with ongoing brain state. Often, such interaction takes place within individual circuits that are capable of both mediating the internally ongoing plan as well as representing exogenous sensory events. Here, we investigated how sensory-driven neural activity can be integrated, very often in the same neuron types, into ongoing saccade motor commands. Despite the ballistic nature of saccades, visually induced action potentials in the rhesus macaque superior colliculus (SC), a structure known to drive eye movements, not only occurred intra-saccadically, but they were also associated with highly predictable modifications of ongoing eye movements. Such predictable modifications reflected a simultaneity of movement-related discharge at one SC site and visually induced activity at another. Our results suggest instantaneous readout of the SC during movement generation, irrespective of activity source, and they explain a significant component of kinematic variability of motor outputs.

Bilateral control of interceptive saccades: evidence from the ipsipulsion of vertical saccades after caudal fastigial inactivation

The caudal fastigial nuclei (cFN) are the output nuclei by which the medio-posterior cerebellum influences the production of saccades toward a visual target. On the basis of the organization of their efferences to the premotor burst neurons and the bilateral control of saccades, the hypothesis was proposed that the same unbalanced activity accounts for the dysmetria of all saccades during cFN unilateral inactivation, regardless of whether the saccade is horizontal, oblique, or vertical. We further tested this hypothesis by studying, in two head-restrained macaques, the effects of unilaterally inactivating the caudal fastigial nucleus on saccades toward a target moving vertically with a constant, increasing or decreasing speed. After local muscimol injection, vertical saccades were deviated horizontally toward the injected side with a magnitude that increased with saccade size. The ipsipulsion indeed depended on the tested target speed but not its instantaneous value because it did not increase (decrease) when the target accelerated (decelerated). By subtracting the effect on contralesional horizontal saccades from the effect on ipsilesional ones, we found that the net bilateral effect on horizontal saccades was strongly correlated with the effect on vertical saccades. We explain how this correlation corroborates the bilateral hypothesis and provide arguments against the suggestion that the instantaneous saccade velocity would somehow be "encoded" by the discharge of Purkinje cells in the oculomotor vermis.NEW & NOTEWORTHY Besides causing dysmetric horizontal saccades, unilateral inactivation of caudal fastigial nucleus causes an ipsipulsion of vertical saccades. This study is the first to quantitatively describe this ipsipulsion during saccades toward a moving target. By subtracting the effects on contralesional (hypometric) and ipsilesional (hypermetric) horizontal saccades, we find that this net bilateral effect is strongly correlated with the ipsipulsion of vertical saccades, corroborating the suggestion that a common disorder affects all saccades.

Spatiotemporal factors influence sound-source segregation in localization behavior

To program a goal-directed response in the presence of acoustic reflections, the audio-motor system should suppress the detection of time-delayed sources. We examined the effects of spatial separation and interstimulus delay on the ability of human listeners to localize a pair of broadband sounds in the horizontal plane. Participants indicated how many sounds were heard and where these were perceived by making one or two head-orienting localization responses. Results suggest that perceptual fusion of the two sounds depends on delay and spatial separation. Leading and lagging stimuli in close spatial proximity required longer stimulus delays to be perceptually separated than those further apart. Whenever participants heard one sound, their localization responses for synchronous sounds were oriented to a weighted average of both source locations. For short delays, responses were directed toward the leading stimulus location. Increasing spatial separation enhanced this effect. For longer delays, responses were again directed toward a weighted average. When participants perceived two sounds, the first and the second response were directed to either of the leading and lagging source locations. Perceived locations were interchanged often in their temporal order (in ∼40% of trials). We show that the percept of two sounds occurring requires sufficient spatiotemporal separation, after which localization can be performed with high accuracy. We propose that the percept of temporal order of two concurrent sounds results from a different process than localization and discuss how dynamic lateral excitatory-inhibitory interactions within a spatial sensorimotor map could explain the findings.NEW & NOTEWORTHY Sound localization requires spectral and temporal processing of implicit acoustic cues, and is seriously challenged when multiple sources coincide closely in space and time. We systematically varied spatial-temporal disparities for two sounds and instructed listeners to generate goal-directed head movements. We found that even when the auditory system has accurate representations of both sources, it still has trouble to decide whether the scene contained one or two sounds, and in which order they appeared.

Frontal eye field inactivation alters the readout of superior colliculus activity for saccade generation in a task-dependent manner

Saccades require a spatiotemporal transformation of activity between the intermediate layers of the superior colliculus (iSC) and downstream brainstem burst generator. The dynamic linear ensemble-coding model (Goossens and Van Opstal 2006) proposes that each iSC spike contributes a fixed mini-vector to saccade displacement. Although biologically-plausible, this model assumes cortical areas like the frontal eye fields (FEF) simply provide the saccadic goal to be executed by the iSC and brainstem burst generator. However, the FEF and iSC operate in unison during saccades, and a pathway from the FEF to the brainstem burst generator that bypasses the iSC exists. Here, we investigate the impact of large yet reversible inactivation of the FEF on iSC activity in the context of the model across four saccade tasks. We exploit the overlap of saccade vectors generated when the FEF is inactivated or not, comparing the number of iSC spikes for metrically-matched saccades. We found that the iSC emits fewer spikes for metrically-matched saccades during FEF inactivation. The decrease in spike count is task-dependent, with a greater decrease accompanying more cognitively-demanding saccades. Our results show that FEF integrity influences the readout of iSC activity in a task-dependent manner. We propose that the dynamic linear ensemble-coding model be modified so that FEF inactivation increases the gain of a readout parameter, effectively increasing the influence of a single iSC spike. We speculate that this modification could be instantiated by FEF and iSC pathways to the cerebellum that could modulate the excitability of the brainstem burst generator.

Slow-fast control of eye movements: an instance of Zeeman's model for an action

The rapid eye movements (saccades) used to transfer gaze between targets are examples of an action. The behaviour of saccades matches that of the slow-fast model of actions originally proposed by Zeeman. Here, we extend Zeeman's model by incorporating an accumulator that represents the increase in certainty of the presence of a target, together with an integrator that converts a velocity command to a position command. The saccadic behaviour of several foveate species, including human, rhesus monkey and mouse, is replicated by the augmented model. Predictions of the linear stability of the saccadic system close to equilibrium are made, and it is shown that these could be tested by applying state-space reconstruction techniques to neurophysiological recordings. Moreover, each model equation describes behaviour that can be matched to specific classes of neurons found throughout the oculomotor system, and the implication of the model is that build-up, burst and omnipause neurons are found throughout the oculomotor pathway because they constitute the simplest circuit that can produce the motor commands required to specify the trajectories of motor actions.

Successful visually guided eye movements following sight restoration after congenital cataracts

Sensitive periods have previously been identified for several human visual system functions. Yet, it is unknown to what degree the development of visually guided oculomotor control depends on early visual experience-for example, whether and to what degree humans whose sight was restored after a transient period of congenital visual deprivation are able to conduct visually guided eye movements. In the present study, we developed new calibration and analysis techniques for eye tracking data contaminated with pervasive nystagmus, which is typical for this population. We investigated visually guided eye movements in sight recovery individuals with long periods of visual pattern deprivation (3-36 years) following birth due to congenital, dense, total, bilateral cataracts. As controls we assessed (1) individuals with nystagmus due to causes other than cataracts, (2) individuals with developmental cataracts after cataract removal, and (3) individuals with normal vision. Congenital cataract reversal individuals were able to perform visually guided gaze shifts, even when their blindness had lasted for decades. The typical extensive nystagmus of this group distorted eye movement trajectories, but measures of latency and accuracy were as expected from their prevailing nystagmus-that is, not worse than in the nystagmus control group. To the best of our knowledge, the present quantitative study is the first to investigate the characteristics of oculomotor control in congenital cataract reversal individuals, and it indicates a remarkable effectiveness of visually guided eye movements despite long-lasting periods of visual deprivation.

Electrical stimulation in a spiking neural network model of monkey superior colliculus

The superior colliculus (SC) generates saccades by recruiting a population of cells in its topographically organized motor map. Supra-threshold electrical stimulation in the SC produces a normometric saccade with little effect of the stimulation parameters. Moreover, the kinematics of electrically evoked saccades strongly resemble natural, visual-evoked saccades. These findings support models in which the saccade vector is determined by a center-of-gravity computation of activated neurons, while trajectory and kinematics arise in brainstem-cerebellar feedback circuits. Recent single-unit recordings, however, have indicated that the SC population also specifies the instantaneous saccade kinematics, supporting an alternative model, in which the saccade trajectory results from dynamic summation of movement effects of all SC spike trains. Here we reconcile the linear summation model with stimulation results, by assuming that the electric field directly activates a relatively small set of neurons around the electrode tip, which subsequently sets up a large population response through lateral synaptic interactions.

Microstimulation in a spiking neural network model of the midbrain superior colliculus

The midbrain superior colliculus (SC) generates a rapid saccadic eye movement to a sensory stimulus by recruiting a population of cells in its topographically organized motor map. Supra-threshold electrical microstimulation in the SC reveals that the site of stimulation produces a normometric saccade vector with little effect of the stimulation parameters. Moreover, electrically evoked saccades (E-saccades) have kinematic properties that strongly resemble natural, visual-evoked saccades (V-saccades). These findings support models in which the saccade vector is determined by a center-of-gravity computation of activated neurons, while its trajectory and kinematics arise from downstream feedback circuits in the brainstem. Recent single-unit recordings, however, have indicated that the SC population also specifies instantaneous kinematics. These results support an alternative model, in which the desired saccade trajectory, including its kinematics, follows from instantaneous summation of movement effects of all SC spike trains. But how to reconcile this model with microstimulation results? Although it is thought that microstimulation activates a large population of SC neurons, the mechanism through which it arises is unknown. We developed a spiking neural network model of the SC, in which microstimulation directly activates a relatively small set of neurons around the electrode tip, which subsequently sets up a large population response through lateral synaptic interactions. We show that through this mechanism the population drives an E-saccade with near-normal kinematics that are largely independent of the stimulation parameters. Only at very low stimulus intensities the network recruits a population with low firing rates, resulting in abnormally slow saccades.

Maps and sensorimotor transformations for eye-head gaze shifts: Role of the midbrain superior colliculus

Single-unit recordings in head-restrained monkeys indicated that the population of saccade-related cells in the midbrain Superior Colliculus (SC) encodes the kinematics of desired straight saccade trajectories by the cumulative number of spikes. In addition, the nonlinear main sequence of saccades (their amplitude-peak velocity saturation) emerges from a spatial gradient of peak-firing rates of collicular neurons, rather than from neural saturation at brainstem burst generators. We here extend this idea to eye-head gaze shifts and illustrate how the cumulative spike-count in head-unrestrained monkeys relates to the desired gaze trajectory and its kinematics. We argue that the output of the motor SC is an abstract desired gaze-motor signal, which drives in a feedforward way the instantaneous kinematics of ongoing gaze shifts, including the strong influence of initial eye position on gaze kinematics. We propose that the neural population acts as a vectorial gaze pulse-generator for eye-head saccades, which is subsequently decomposed into signals that drive both motor systems in appropriate craniocentric reference frames within a dynamic gaze-velocity feedback loop.

Neurophysiology of visually guided eye movements: critical review and alternative viewpoint

In this article, we perform a critical examination of assumptions that led to the assimilation of measurements of the movement of a rigid body in the physical world to parameters encoded within brain activity. In many neurophysiological studies of goal-directed eye movements, equivalence has indeed been made between the kinematics of the eyes or of a targeted object and the associated neuronal processes. Such a way of proceeding brings up the reduction encountered in projective geometry when a multidimensional object is being projected onto a one-dimensional segment. The measurement of a movement indeed consists of generation of a series of numerical values from which magnitudes such as amplitude, duration, and their ratio (speed) are calculated. By contrast, movement generation consists of activation of multiple parallel channels in the brain. Yet, for many years, kinematic parameters were supposed to be encoded in brain activity, even though the neuronal image of most physical events is distributed both spatially and temporally. After explaining why the "neuronalization" of such parameters is questionable for elucidating the neural processes underlying the execution of saccadic and pursuit eye movements, we propose an alternative to the framework that has dominated the last five decades. A viewpoint is presented in which these processes follow principles that are defined by intrinsic properties of the brain (population coding, multiplicity of transmission delays, synchrony of firing, connectivity). We propose reconsideration of the time course of saccadic and pursuit eye movements as the restoration of equilibria between neural populations that exert opposing motor tendencies.

Instantaneous Midbrain Control of Saccade Velocity

The ability to interact with our environment requires the brain to transform spatially represented sensory signals into temporally encoded motor commands for appropriate control of the relevant effectors. For visually guided eye movements, or saccades, the superior colliculus (SC) is assumed to be the final stage of spatial representation, and instantaneous control of the movement is achieved through a rate code representation in the lower brain stem. We investigated whether SC activity in nonhuman primates (Macaca mulatta, 2 male and 1 female) also uses a dynamic rate code, in addition to the spatial representation. Noting that the kinematics of amplitude-matched movements exhibit trial-to-trial variability, we regressed instantaneous SC activity with instantaneous eye velocity and found a robust correlation throughout saccade duration. Peak correlation was tightly linked to time of peak velocity, the optimal efferent delay between SC activity and eye velocity was constant at ∼12 ms both at onset and during the saccade, and SC neurons with higher firing rates exhibited stronger correlations. Moreover, the strong correlative relationship and constant efferent delay observation were preserved when eye movement profiles were substantially altered by a blink-induced perturbation. These results indicate that the rate code of individual SC neurons can control instantaneous eye velocity and argue against a serial process of spatial-to-temporal transformation. They also motivated us to consider a new framework of saccade control that does not incorporate traditionally accepted elements, such as the comparator and resettable integrator, whose neural correlates have remained elusive.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT All movements exhibit time-varying features that are under instantaneous control of the innervating neural command. At what stage in the brain is dynamical control present? It is well known that, in the skeletomotor system, neurons in the motor cortex use dynamical control. In the oculomotor system, in contrast, instantaneous velocity control of saccadic eye movements is not thought to be enforced until the lower brainstem. Using correlations between residual signals across trials, we show that instantaneous control of saccade velocity is present earlier in the visuo-oculomotor neuraxis, at the level of superior colliculus. The results require us to consider alternate frameworks of the neural control of saccades.

Accuracy-Precision Trade-off in Human Sound Localisation

Sensory representations are typically endowed with intrinsic noise, leading to variability and inaccuracies in perceptual responses. The Bayesian framework accounts for an optimal strategy to deal with sensory-motor uncertainty, by combining the noisy sensory input with prior information regarding the distribution of stimulus properties. The maximum-a-posteriori (MAP) estimate selects the perceptual response from the peak (mode) of the resulting posterior distribution that ensure optimal accuracy-precision trade-off when the underlying distributions are Gaussians (minimal mean-squared error, with minimum response variability). We tested this model on human eye- movement responses toward broadband sounds, masked by various levels of background noise, and for head movements to sounds with poor spectral content. We report that the response gain (accuracy) and variability (precision) of the elevation response components changed systematically with the signal-to-noise ratio of the target sound: gains were high for high SNRs and decreased for low SNRs. In contrast, the azimuth response components maintained high gains for all conditions, as predicted by maximum-likelihood estimation. However, we found that the elevation data did not follow the MAP prediction. Instead, results were better described by an alternative decision strategy, in which the response results from taking a random sample from the posterior in each trial. We discuss two potential implementations of a simple posterior sampling scheme in the auditory system that account for the results and argue that although the observed response strategies for azimuth and elevation are sub-optimal with respect to their variability, it allows the auditory system to actively explore the environment in the absence of adequate sensory evidence.

Double Stimulation in a Spiking Neural Network Model of the Midbrain Superior Colliculus

The midbrain superior colliculus (SC) is a crucial sensorimotor interface in the generation of rapid saccadic gaze shifts. For every saccade it recruits a large population of cells in its vectorial motor map. Supra-threshold electrical microstimulation in the SC reveals that the stimulated site produces the saccade vector specified by the motor map. Electrically evoked saccades (E-saccades) have kinematic properties that strongly resemble natural, visual-evoked saccades (V-saccades), with little influence of the stimulation parameters. Moreover, synchronous stimulation at two sites yields eye movements that resemble a weighted vector average of the individual stimulation effects. Single-unit recordings have indicated that the SC population acts as a vectorial pulse generator by specifying the instantaneous gaze-kinematics through dynamic summation of the movement effects of all SC spike trains. But how to reconcile the a-specific stimulation pulses with these intricate saccade properties? We recently developed a spiking neural network model of the SC, in which microstimulation initially activates a relatively small set of (~50) neurons around the electrode tip, which subsequently sets up a large population response (~5,000 neurons) through lateral synaptic interactions. Single-site microstimulation in this network thus produces the saccade properties and firing rate profiles as seen in single-unit recording experiments. We here show that this mechanism also accounts for many results of simultaneous double stimulation at different SC sites. The resulting E-saccade trajectories resemble a weighted average of the single-site effects, in which stimulus current strength of the electrode pulses serve as weighting factors. We discuss under which conditions the network produces effects that deviate from experimental results.

Modeling auditory-visual evoked eye-head gaze shifts in dynamic multisteps

In dynamic visual or auditory gaze double-steps, a brief target flash or sound burst is presented in midflight of an ongoing eye-head gaze shift. Behavioral experiments in humans and monkeys have indicated that the subsequent eye and head movements to the target are goal-directed, regardless of stimulus timing, first gaze shift characteristics, and initial conditions. This remarkable behavior requires that the gaze-control system 1) has continuous access to accurate signals about eye-in-head position and ongoing eye-head movements, 2) that it accounts for different internal signal delays, and 3) that it is able to update the retinal ( TE) and head-centric ( TH) target coordinates into appropriate eye-centered and head-centered motor commands on millisecond time scales. As predictive, feedforward remapping of targets cannot account for this behavior, we propose that targets are transformed and stored into a stable reference frame as soon as their sensory information becomes available. We present a computational model, in which recruited cells in the midbrain superior colliculus drive eyes and head to the stored target location through a common dynamic oculocentric gaze-velocity command, which is continuously updated from the stable goal and transformed into appropriate oculocentric and craniocentric motor commands. We describe two equivalent, yet conceptually different, implementations that both account for the complex, but accurate, kinematic behaviors and trajectories of eye-head gaze shifts under a variety of challenging multisensory conditions, such as in dynamic visual-auditory multisteps.

Neural mechanisms of speed-accuracy tradeoff of visual search: saccade vigor, the origin of targeting errors, and comparison of the superior colliculus and frontal eye field

Balancing the speed-accuracy tradeoff (SAT) is necessary for successful behavior. Using a visual search task with interleaved cues emphasizing speed or accuracy, we recently reported diverse contributions of frontal eye field (FEF) neurons instantiating salience evidence and response preparation. Here, we report replication of visual search SAT performance in two macaque monkeys, new information about variation of saccade dynamics with SAT, extension of the neurophysiological investigation to describe processes in the superior colliculus (SC), and a description of the origin of search errors in this task. Saccade vigor varied idiosyncratically across SAT conditions and monkeys but tended to decrease with response time. As observed in the FEF, speed-accuracy tradeoff was accomplished through several distinct adjustments in the superior colliculus. In "Accurate" relative to "Fast" trials, visually responsive neurons in SC as in FEF had lower baseline firing rates and later target selection. The magnitude of these adjustments in SC was indistinguishable from that in FEF. Search errors occurred when visual salience neurons in the FEF and the SC treated distractors as targets, even in the Accurate condition. Unlike FEF, the magnitude of visual responses in the SC did not vary across SAT conditions. Also unlike FEF, the activity of SC movement neurons when saccades were initiated was equivalent in Fast and Accurate trials. Saccade-related neural activity in SC, but not FEF, varied with saccade peak velocity. These results extend our understanding of the cortical and subcortical contributions to SAT. NEW & NOTEWORTHY Neurophysiological mechanisms of speed-accuracy tradeoff (SAT) have only recently been investigated. This article reports the first replication of SAT performance in nonhuman primates, the first report of variation of saccade dynamics with SAT, the first description of superior colliculus contributions to SAT, and the first description of the origin of errors during SAT. These results inform and constrain new models of distributed decision making.

Integrating Brain and Biomechanical Models-A New Paradigm for Understanding Neuro-muscular Control

To date, realistic models of how the central nervous system governs behavior have been restricted in scope to the brain, brainstem or spinal column, as if these existed as disembodied organs. Further, the model is often exercised in relation to an in vivo physiological experiment with input comprising an impulse, a periodic signal or constant activation, and output as a pattern of neural activity in one or more neural populations. Any link to behavior is inferred only indirectly via these activity patterns. We argue that to discover the principles of operation of neural systems, it is necessary to express their behavior in terms of physical movements of a realistic motor system, and to supply inputs that mimic sensory experience. To do this with confidence, we must connect our brain models to neuro-muscular models and provide relevant visual and proprioceptive feedback signals, thereby closing the loop of the simulation. This paper describes an effort to develop just such an integrated brain and biomechanical system using a number of pre-existing models. It describes a model of the saccadic oculomotor system incorporating a neuromuscular model of the eye and its six extraocular muscles. The position of the eye determines how illumination of a retinotopic input population projects information about the location of a saccade target into the system. A pre-existing saccadic burst generator model was incorporated into the system, which generated motoneuron activity patterns suitable for driving the biomechanical eye. The model was demonstrated to make accurate saccades to a target luminance under a set of environmental constraints. Challenges encountered in the development of this model showed the importance of this integrated modeling approach. Thus, we exposed shortcomings in individual model components which were only apparent when these were supplied with the more plausible inputs available in a closed loop design. Consequently we were able to suggest missing functionality which the system would require to reproduce more realistic behavior. The construction of such closed-loop animal models constitutes a new paradigm of computational neurobehavior and promises a more thoroughgoing approach to our understanding of the brain's function as a controller for movement and behavior.

The fate of nonselected activity in saccadic decisions: distinct goal-related and history-related modulation

The global effect (GE) traditionally refers to the tendency of effectors (e.g., hand, eyes) to first land in between two nearby stimuli, forming a unimodal distribution. By measuring a shift of this distribution, recent studies used the GE to assess the presence of decision-related inputs on the motor map for eye movements. However, this method cannot distinguish whether one stimulus is inhibited or the other is facilitated and could not detect situations where both stimuli are inhibited or facilitated. Here, we detect deviations in the bimodal distribution of landing positions for remote stimuli and find that this bimodal GE reveals the presence, location, and polarity (facilitation or inhibition) of history-related and goal-related modulation of the nonselected activity (e.g., the distractor activity in correct trials, and the target activity in error trials). We tested, for different interstimulus distances, the effect of the rarity of double-stimulus trials and the difference between performing a discrimination task compared with free choice. Our work shows that the effect of rarity is symmetric and decreases with interstimulus distances, while the effect of goal-directed discrimination is asymmetric - occurring only when the distractor is selected for the saccade - and maintained across interstimulus distances. These results suggest that the former effect changes the response property of the motor map, while the latter specifically facilitates the target location. NEW & NOTEWORTHY Deviations in landing positions for saccades to targets and distractors reveal the presence, location and polarity of history-related or goal-related signals. Goal-directed discrimination appears to facilitate the target location, rather than inhibiting the distractor location, Rare occurrence of a choice appears to indiscriminately increase the neural response for both locations.

Removal of inhibition uncovers latent movement potential during preparation

The motor system prepares for movements well in advance of their execution. In the gaze control system, the dynamics of preparatory neural activity have been well described by stochastic accumulation-to-threshold models. However, it is unclear whether this activity has features indicative of a hidden movement command. We explicitly tested whether preparatory neural activity in premotor neurons of the primate superior colliculus has 'motor potential'. We removed downstream inhibition on the saccadic system using the trigeminal blink reflex, triggering saccades at earlier-than-normal latencies. Accumulating low-frequency activity was predictive of eye movement dynamics tens of milliseconds in advance of the actual saccade, indicating the presence of a latent movement command. We also show that reaching a fixed threshold level is not a necessary condition for movement initiation. The results bring into question extant models of saccade generation and support the possibility of a concurrent representation for movement preparation and generation.

Learning to Predict and Control the Physics of Our Movements

When we hold an object in our hand, the mass of the object alters the physics of our arm, changing the relationship between motor commands that our brain sends to our arm muscles and the resulting motion of our hand. If the object is unfamiliar to us, our first movement will exhibit an error, producing a trajectory that is different from the one we had intended. This experience of error initiates learning in our brain, making it so that on the very next attempt our motor commands partially compensate for the unfamiliar physics, resulting in smaller errors. With further practice, the compensation becomes more complete, and our brain forms a model that predicts the physics of the object. This model is a motor memory that frees us from having to relearn the physics the next time that we encounter the object. The mechanism by which the brain transforms sensory prediction errors into corrective motor commands is the basis for how we learn the physics of objects with which we interact. The cerebellum and the motor cortex appear to be critical for our ability to learn physics, allowing us to use tools that extend our capabilities, making us masters of our environment.

A spiking neural network model of the midbrain superior colliculus that generates saccadic motor commands

Single-unit recordings suggest that the midbrain superior colliculus (SC) acts as an optimal controller for saccadic gaze shifts. The SC is proposed to be the site within the visuomotor system where the nonlinear spatial-to-temporal transformation is carried out: the population encodes the intended saccade vector by its location in the motor map (spatial), and its trajectory and velocity by the distribution of firing rates (temporal). The neurons' burst profiles vary systematically with their anatomical positions and intended saccade vectors, to account for the nonlinear main-sequence kinematics of saccades. Yet, the underlying collicular mechanisms that could result in these firing patterns are inaccessible to current neurobiological techniques. Here, we propose a simple spiking neural network model that reproduces the spike trains of saccade-related cells in the intermediate and deep SC layers during saccades. The model assumes that SC neurons have distinct biophysical properties for spike generation that depend on their anatomical position in combination with a center-surround lateral connectivity. Both factors are needed to account for the observed firing patterns. Our model offers a basis for neuronal algorithms for spatiotemporal transformations and bio-inspired optimal controllers.

Optimisation of an exemplar oculomotor model using multi-objective genetic algorithms executed on a GPU-CPU combination

BACKGROUND

Parameter optimisation is a critical step in the construction of computational biology models. In eye movement research, computational models are increasingly important to understanding the mechanistic basis of normal and abnormal behaviour. In this study, we considered an existing neurobiological model of fast eye movements (saccades), capable of generating realistic simulations of: (i) normal horizontal saccades; and (ii) infantile nystagmus - pathological ocular oscillations that can be subdivided into different waveform classes. By developing appropriate fitness functions, we optimised the model to existing experimental saccade and nystagmus data, using a well-established multi-objective genetic algorithm. This algorithm required the model to be numerically integrated for very large numbers of parameter combinations. To address this computational bottleneck, we implemented a master-slave parallelisation, in which the model integrations were distributed across the compute units of a GPU, under the control of a CPU.

RESULTS

While previous nystagmus fitting has been based on reproducing qualitative waveform characteristics, our optimisation protocol enabled us to perform the first direct fits of a model to experimental recordings. The fits to normal eye movements showed that although saccades of different amplitudes can be accurately simulated by individual parameter sets, a single set capable of fitting all amplitudes simultaneously cannot be determined. The fits to nystagmus oscillations systematically identified the parameter regimes in which the model can reproduce a number of canonical nystagmus waveforms to a high accuracy, whilst also identifying some waveforms that the model cannot simulate. Using a GPU to perform the model integrations yielded a speedup of around 20 compared to a high-end CPU.

CONCLUSIONS

The results of both optimisation problems enabled us to quantify the predictive capacity of the model, suggesting specific modifications that could expand its repertoire of simulated behaviours. In addition, the optimal parameter distributions we obtained were consistent with previous computational studies that had proposed the saccadic braking signal to be the origin of the instability preceding the development of infantile nystagmus oscillations. Finally, the master-slave parallelisation method we developed to accelerate the optimisation process can be readily adapted to fit other highly parametrised computational biology models to experimental data.

A Model of the Superior Colliculus Predicts Fixation Locations during Scene Viewing and Visual Search

Modern computational models of attention predict fixations using saliency maps and target maps, which prioritize locations for fixation based on feature contrast and target goals, respectively. But whereas many such models are biologically plausible, none have looked to the oculomotor system for design constraints or parameter specification. Conversely, although most models of saccade programming are tightly coupled to underlying neurophysiology, none have been tested using real-world stimuli and tasks. We combined the strengths of these two approaches in MASC, a model of attention in the superior colliculus (SC) that captures known neurophysiological constraints on saccade programming. We show that MASC predicted the fixation locations of humans freely viewing naturalistic scenes and performing exemplar and categorical search tasks, a breadth achieved by no other existing model. Moreover, it did this as well or better than its more specialized state-of-the-art competitors. MASC's predictive success stems from its inclusion of high-level but core principles of SC organization: an over-representation of foveal information, size-invariant population codes, cascaded population averaging over distorted visual and motor maps, and competition between motor point images for saccade programming, all of which cause further modulation of priority (attention) after projection of saliency and target maps to the SC. Only by incorporating these organizing brain principles into our models can we fully understand the transformation of complex visual information into the saccade programs underlying movements of overt attention. With MASC, a theoretical footing now exists to generate and test computationally explicit predictions of behavioral and neural responses in visually complex real-world contexts.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The superior colliculus (SC) performs a visual-to-motor transformation vital to overt attention, but existing SC models cannot predict saccades to visually complex real-world stimuli. We introduce a brain-inspired SC model that outperforms state-of-the-art image-based competitors in predicting the sequences of fixations made by humans performing a range of everyday tasks (scene viewing and exemplar and categorical search), making clear the value of looking to the brain for model design. This work is significant in that it will drive new research by making computationally explicit predictions of SC neural population activity in response to naturalistic stimuli and tasks. It will also serve as a blueprint for the construction of other brain-inspired models, helping to usher in the next generation of truly intelligent autonomous systems.

Parallel activation of prospective motor plans during visually-guided sequential saccades

Behavioural evidences suggest that sequential saccades to multiple stimuli are planned in parallel. However, it remains unclear whether such parallel programming reflects concurrent processing of goals or whether multiple motor plans coexist, unfolding subsequently during execution. Here we use midway saccades, directed at intermediate locations between two targets, as a probe to address this question in a novel double-step adaptation task. The task consisted of trials where subjects had to follow the appearance of two targets presented in succession with two sequential saccades. In some trials, the second target predictably jumped to a new location during the second saccade. Initially, the second saccade was aimed at the final target's location before the jump. As subjects adapted to the target jump, saccades were aimed to the second target's new location. We tested whether the spatial distribution of midway saccades could be explained as an interaction between two concurrent saccade goals, each directed at the two target locations, or between the initial motor plan to the first target location and a prospective motor plan directed from the initial to the final target location. A shift in the midway saccades' distribution towards the jumped location of the second target following adaptation indicated that the brain can make use of prospective motor plans to guide sequential eye movements. Furthermore, we observed that the spatiotemporal pattern of endpoints of midway saccades can be well explained by a motor addition model. These results provide strong evidence of parallel activation of prospective motor plans during sequential saccades.

Modeling eye-head gaze shifts in multiple contexts without motor planning

During gaze shifts, the eyes and head collaborate to rapidly capture a target (saccade) and fixate it. Accordingly, models of gaze shift control should embed both saccadic and fixation modes and a mechanism for switching between them. We demonstrate a model in which the eye and head platforms are driven by a shared gaze error signal. To limit the number of free parameters, we implement a model reduction approach in which steady-state cerebellar effects at each of their projection sites are lumped with the parameter of that site. The model topology is consistent with anatomy and neurophysiology, and can replicate eye-head responses observed in multiple experimental contexts: 1) observed gaze characteristics across species and subjects can emerge from this structure with minor parametric changes; 2) gaze can move to a goal while in the fixation mode; 3) ocular compensation for head perturbations during saccades could rely on vestibular-only cells in the vestibular nuclei with postulated projections to burst neurons; 4) two nonlinearities suffice, i.e., the experimentally-determined mapping of tectoreticular cells onto brain stem targets and the increased recruitment of the head for larger target eccentricities; 5) the effects of initial conditions on eye/head trajectories are due to neural circuit dynamics, not planning; and 6) "compensatory" ocular slow phases exist even after semicircular canal plugging, because of interconnections linking eye-head circuits. Our model structure also simulates classical vestibulo-ocular reflex and pursuit nystagmus, and provides novel neural circuit and behavioral predictions, notably that both eye-head coordination and segmental limb coordination are possible without trajectory planning.

Beyond the point of no return: effects of visual distractors on saccade amplitude and velocity

Visual transients, such as a bright flash, reduce the proportion of saccades executed, ∼60-125 ms after flash onset, a phenomenon known as saccadic inhibition (SI). Across three experiments, we apply a similar time-course analysis to the amplitudes and velocities of saccades. Alongside the expected reduction of saccade frequency in the key time period, we report two perturbations of the "main sequence": one before and one after the period of SI. First, saccades launched between 30 and 70 ms, following the flash, were hypometric, with peak speed exceeding that expected for a saccade of similar amplitude. This finding was in contrast to the common idea that saccades have passed a "point of no return," ∼60 ms before launching, escaping interference from distractors. The early hypometric saccades observed were not a consequence of spatial averaging between target and distractor locations, as they were found not only following a localized central flash (experiment 1) but also following a spatially generalized flash (experiment 2). Second, across experiments, saccades launched at 110 ms postflash, toward the end of SI, had normal amplitude but a peak speed higher than expected for that amplitude, suggesting increased collicular excitation at the time of launching. Overall, the results show that saccades that escape inhibition following a visual transient are not necessarily unaffected but instead, can reveal interference in spatial and kinematic measures.

A parsimonious computational model of visual target position encoding in the superior colliculus

The superior colliculus (SC) is a brainstem structure at the crossroad of multiple functional pathways. Several neurophysiological studies suggest that the population of active neurons in the SC encodes the location of a visual target to foveate, pursue or attend to. Although extensive research has been carried out on computational modeling, most of the reported models are often based on complex mechanisms and explain a limited number of experimental results. This suggests that a key aspect may have been overlooked in the design of previous computational models. After a careful study of the literature, we hypothesized that the representation of the whole retinal stimulus (not only its center) might play an important role in the dynamics of SC activity. To test this hypothesis, we designed a model of the SC which is built upon three well-accepted principles: the log-polar representation of the visual field onto the SC, the interplay between a center excitation and a surround inhibition and a simple neuronal dynamics, like the one proposed by the dynamic neural field theory. Results show that the retinotopic organization of the collicular activity conveys an implicit computation that deeply impacts the target selection process.

Biomimetic race model of the loop between the superior colliculus and the basal ganglia: Subcortical selection of saccade targets

The superior colliculus, a laminar structure involved in the retinotopic mapping of the visual field, plays a cardinal role in several cortical and subcortical pathways of the saccadic system. Although the selection of saccade targets has long been thought to be mainly the product of cortical processes, a growing body of evidence hints at the implication of the superior colliculus in selection processes independent from cortical inputs, capable of producing saccades at latencies incompatible with the cortical pathways. This selection ability could be produced firstly by the lateral connections between the neurons of its maps, and secondly by its interactions with the midbrain basal ganglia, already renowned for their role in decision making. We propose a biomimetic population-coded race model of selection based on a dynamic tecto-basal loop that reproduces the observed ability of the superior colliculus to stochastically select between similar stimuli. Our model's selection accuracy depends on the discriminability of the target and the distractors. Our model also offers an explanation for the phenomenon of Remote Distractor Effect based on the lateral connectivity within the basal ganglia circuitry rather than on lateral inhibitions within the collicular maps. Finally, we propose a role for the intermediate layers of the superior colliculus, as stochastic integrators dynamically gated by the selective disinhibition of the basal ganglia channels that is consistent with the recorded activity profiles of these neurons.

A model of curved saccade trajectories: spike rate adaptation in the brainstem as the cause of deviation away

The trajectory of saccades to a target is often affected whenever there is a distractor in the visual field. Distractors can cause a saccade to deviate towards their location or away from it. The oculomotor mechanisms that produce deviation towards distractors have been thoroughly explored in behavioral, neurophysiological and computational studies. The mechanisms underlying deviation away, on the other hand, remain unclear. Behavioral findings suggest a mechanism of spatially focused, top-down inhibition in a saccade map, and deviation away has become a tool to investigate such inhibition. However, this inhibition hypothesis has little neuroanatomical or neurophysiological support, and recent findings go against it. Here, we propose that deviation away results from an unbalanced saccade drive from the brainstem, caused by spike rate adaptation in brainstem long-lead burst neurons. Adaptation to stimulation in the direction of the distractor results in an unbalanced drive away from it. An existing model of the saccade system was extended with this theory. The resulting model simulates a wide range of findings on saccade trajectories, including findings that have classically been interpreted to support inhibition views. Furthermore, the model replicated the effect of saccade latency on deviation away, but predicted this effect would be absent with large (400 ms) distractor-target onset asynchrony. This prediction was confirmed in an experiment, which demonstrates that the theory both explains classical findings on saccade trajectories and predicts new findings.

Altered accuracy of saccadic eye movements in children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder

BACKGROUND

Prenatal exposure to alcohol is a major, preventable cause of neurobehavioral dysfunction in children worldwide. The measurement and quantification of saccadic eye movements is a powerful tool for assessing sensory, motor, and cognitive function. The quality of the motor process of an eye movement is known as saccade metrics. Saccade accuracy is 1 component of metrics, which to function optimally requires several cortical brain structures as well as an intact cerebellum and brain-stem. The cerebellum has frequently been reported to be damaged by prenatal alcohol exposure. This study, therefore, tested the hypothesis that children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) will exhibit deficits in the accuracy of saccades.

METHODS

A group of children with FASD (n = 27) between the ages of 8 and 16 and typically developing control children (n = 27) matched for age and sex, completed 3 saccadic eye movement tasks of increasing difficulty. Eye movement performance during the tasks was captured using an infrared eye tracker. Saccade metrics (e.g., velocity, amplitude, accuracy) were quantified and compared between the 2 groups for the 3 different tasks.

RESULTS

Children with FASD were more variable in saccade endpoint accuracy, which was reflected by statistically significant increases in the error of the initial saccade endpoint and the frequency of additional, corrective saccades required to achieve final fixation. This increased variability in accuracy was amplified when the cognitive demand of the tasks increased. Children with FASD also displayed a statistically significant increase in response inhibition errors.

CONCLUSIONS

These data suggest that children with FASD may have deficits in eye movement control and sensory-motor integration including cerebellar circuits, thereby impairing saccade accuracy.

Blink perturbation effects on saccades evoked by microstimulation of the superior colliculus

Current knowledge of saccade-blink interactions suggests that blinks have paradoxical effects on saccade generation. Blinks suppress saccade generation by attenuating the oculomotor drive command in structures like the superior colliculus (SC), but they also disinhibit the saccadic system by removing the potent inhibition of pontine omnipause neurons (OPNs). To better characterize these effects, we evoked the trigeminal blink reflex by delivering an air puff to one eye as saccades were evoked by sub-optimal stimulation of the SC. For every stimulation site, the peak and average velocities of stimulation with blink movements (SwBMs) were lower than stimulation-only saccades (SoMs), supporting the notion that the oculomotor drive is weakened in the presence of a blink. In contrast, the duration of the SwBMs was longer, consistent with the hypothesis that the blink-induced inhibition of the OPNs could prolong the window of time available for oculomotor commands to drive an eye movement. The amplitude of the SwBM could also be larger than the SoM amplitude obtained from the same site, particularly for cases in which blink-associated eye movements exhibited the slowest kinematics. The results are interpreted in terms of neural signatures of saccade-blink interactions.

Components of the neural signal underlying congenital nystagmus

Congenital nystagmus is an involuntary bilateral horizontal oscillation of the eyes that develops soon after birth. In this study, the time constants of each of the components of the neural signal underlying congenital nystagmus were obtained by time series analysis and interpreted by comparison with those of the normal oculomotor system. In the neighbourhood of the fixation position, the system generating the neural signal is approximately linear with 3 degrees of freedom. The shortest time constant was in the range of 7-9 ms and corresponds to a normal saccadic burst signal. The other stable time constant was in the range of 22-70 ms and corresponds to the slide signal. The final time constant characterises the unidentified neural mechanism underlying the unstable drift component of the oscillation cycle and ranges between 31 and 32 ms across waveforms. The characterisation of this unstable time constant poses a challenge for the modelling of both the normal and abnormal oculomotor control system. We tentatively identify the unstable component with the eye position signal supplied to the superior colliculus in the normal eye movement system and explore some of the implications of this hypothesis.

Optimal control of saccades by spatial-temporal activity patterns in the monkey superior colliculus

A major challenge in computational neurobiology is to understand how populations of noisy, broadly-tuned neurons produce accurate goal-directed actions such as saccades. Saccades are high-velocity eye movements that have stereotyped, nonlinear kinematics; their duration increases with amplitude, while peak eye-velocity saturates for large saccades. Recent theories suggest that these characteristics reflect a deliberate strategy that optimizes a speed-accuracy tradeoff in the presence of signal-dependent noise in the neural control signals. Here we argue that the midbrain superior colliculus (SC), a key sensorimotor interface that contains a topographically-organized map of saccade vectors, is in an ideal position to implement such an optimization principle. Most models attribute the nonlinear saccade kinematics to saturation in the brainstem pulse generator downstream from the SC. However, there is little data to support this assumption. We now present new neurophysiological evidence for an alternative scheme, which proposes that these properties reside in the spatial-temporal dynamics of SC activity. As predicted by this scheme, we found a remarkably systematic organization in the burst properties of saccade-related neurons along the rostral-to-caudal (i.e., amplitude-coding) dimension of the SC motor map: peak firing-rates systematically decrease for cells encoding larger saccades, while burst durations and skewness increase, suggesting that this spatial gradient underlies the increase in duration and skewness of the eye velocity profiles with amplitude. We also show that all neurons in the recruited population synchronize their burst profiles, indicating that the burst-timing of each cell is determined by the planned saccade vector in which it participates, rather than by its anatomical location. Together with the observation that saccade-related SC cells indeed show signal-dependent noise, this precisely tuned organization of SC burst activity strongly supports the notion of an optimal motor-control principle embedded in the SC motor map as it fully accounts for the straight trajectories and kinematic nonlinearity of saccades.

The relative impact of microstimulation parameters on movement generation

Microstimulation is widely used in neurophysiology to characterize brain areas with behavior and in clinical therapeutics to treat neurological disorder. Current intensity and frequency, which respectively influence activation patterns in spatial and temporal domains, are typically selected to elicit a desired response, but their effective influence on behavior has not been thoroughly examined. We delivered microstimulation to the primate superior colliculus while systematically varying each parameter to capture effects of a large range of parameter space. We found that frequency was more effective in driving output properties, whereas properties changed gradually with intensity. Interestingly, when different parameter combinations were matched for total charge, effects on behavioral properties became seemingly equivalent. This study provides a first level resource for choosing desired parameter ranges to effectively manipulate behavior. It also provides insights into interchangeability of parameters, which can assist clinical microstimulation that looks to appropriately control behavior within designated constraints, such as power consumption.

A neural mechanism for coordinate transformation predicts pre-saccadic remapping

Whenever we shift our gaze, any location information encoded in the retinocentric reference frame that is predominant in the visual system is obliterated. How is spatial memory retained across gaze changes? Two different explanations have been proposed: Retinocentric information may be transformed into a gaze-invariant representation through a mechanism consistent with gain fields observed in parietal cortex, or retinocentric information may be updated in anticipation of the shift expected with every gaze change, a proposal consistent with neural observations in LIP. The explanations were considered incompatible with each other, because retinocentric update is observed before the gaze shift has terminated. Here, we show that a neural dynamic mechanism for coordinate transformation can also account for retinocentric updating. Our model postulates an extended mechanism of reference frame transformation that is based on bidirectional mapping between a retinocentric and a body-centered representation and that enables transforming multiple object locations in parallel. The dynamic coupling between the two reference frames generates a shift of the retinocentric representation for every gaze change. We account for the predictive nature of the observed remapping activity by using the same kind of neural mechanism to generate an internal representation of gaze direction that is predictively updated based on corollary discharge signals. We provide evidence for the model by accounting for a series of behavioral and neural experimental observations.

A test of spatial temporal decoding mechanisms in the superior colliculus

Population coding is a ubiquitous principle in the nervous system for the proper control of motor behavior. A significant amount of research is dedicated to studying population activity in the superior colliculus (SC) to investigate the motor control of saccadic eye movements. Vector summation with saturation (VSS) has been proposed as a mechanism for how population activity in the SC can be decoded to generate saccades. Interestingly, the model produces different predictions when decoding two simultaneous populations at high vs. low levels of activity. We tested these predictions by generating two simultaneous populations in the SC with high or low levels of dual microstimulation. We also combined varying levels of stimulation with visually induced activity. We found that our results did not perfectly conform to the predictions of the VSS scheme and conclude that the simplest implementation of the model is incomplete. We propose that additional parameters to the model might account for the results of this investigation.

Linear visuomotor transformations in midbrain superior colliculus control saccadic eye-movements

It is well established that a localized population of neurons in the motor map of the midbrain superior colliculus (SC) drives a saccadic eye-head gaze shift. However, there is controversy as to how the brainstem saccade burst generators decode the SC activity. We focus on eye-movement generation by comparing two competing schemes from the recent literature that are both supported by neurophysiological evidence: the vector-averaging scheme versus the vector summation model. Whereas the former contains at least four nonlinearities to explain visuomotor planning and saccade execution, the latter relies predominantly on linear operations. We have demonstrated that the summation model accounts for the nonlinear main sequence of saccade kinematics, and predicted that this results from a spatial gradient in temporal burst profiles of SC cells: rostral cells have higher peak-firing rates and shorter burst durations than caudal cells. Yet, the number of spikes in their saccade-related bursts is identical. In contrast, the averaging model does not predict such activity profiles. We now also show that by incorporating the concept of predictive remapping in the spatial updating of saccade sequences, the phenomenon of target averaging in double-stimulation experiments, and the occurrence of goal-directed, but highly curved saccades in the double-step paradigm, can all be explained by the same linear summation mechanism. We argue that the linear model is more in line with neurophysiological data, while relying on fewer ad-hoc assumptions than the nonlinear vector-averaging scheme.

Motor functions of the superior colliculus

The mammalian superior colliculus (SC) and its nonmammalian homolog, the optic tectum, constitute a major node in processing sensory information, incorporating cognitive factors, and issuing motor commands. The resulting action-to orient toward or away from a stimulus-can be accomplished as an integrated movement across oculomotor, cephalomotor, and skeletomotor effectors. The SC also participates in preserving fixation during intersaccadic intervals. This review highlights the repertoire of movements attributed to SC function and analyzes the significance of results obtained from causality-based experiments (microstimulation and inactivation). The mechanisms potentially used to decode the population activity in the SC into an appropriate movement command are also discussed.

Order of operations for decoding superior colliculus activity for saccade generation

To help understand the order of events that occurs when generating saccades, we simulated and tested two commonly stated decoding models that are believed to occur in the oculomotor system: vector averaging (VA) and center-of-mass. To generate accurate saccades, each model incorporates two required criteria: 1) a decoding mechanism that deciphers a population response of the superior colliculus (SC) and 2) an exponential transformation that converts the saccade vector into visual coordinates. The order of these two criteria is used differently within each model, yet the significance of the sequence has not been quantified. To distinguish between each decoding sequence and hence, to determine the order of events necessary to generate accurate saccades, we simulated the two models. Distinguishable predictions were obtained when two simultaneous motor commands are processed by each model. Experimental tests of the models were performed by observing the distribution of endpoints of saccades evoked by weighted, simultaneous microstimulation of two SC sites. The data were consistent with the predictions of the VA model, in which exponential transformation precedes the decoding computation.