A neural model of saccadic eye movement control explains task-specific adaptation

Abstract

Multiple brain learning sites are needed to calibrate the accuracy of saccadic eye movements. This is true because saccades can be made reactively to visual cues, attentively to visual or auditory cues, or planned in response to memory cues using visual, parietal, and prefrontal cortex, as well as superior colliculus, cerebellum, and reticular formation. The organization of these sites can be probed by displacing a visual target during a saccade. The resulting adaptation typically shows incomplete and asymmetric transfer between different tasks. A neural model of saccadic system learning is developed to explain these data, as well as data about saccadic coordinate changes.