The frontal eye field provides the goal of saccadic eye movement

Abstract

Microstimulation of oculomotor regions in primate cortex normally evokes saccadic eye movements of stereotypic directions and amplitudes. The fixed-vector nature of the evoked movements is compatible with the creation of either an artificial retinal or motor error signal. However, when microstimulation is applied during an ongoing natural saccade, the starting eye position of the evoked movement differs from the eye position at stimulation onset (due to the latency of the evoked saccade). An analysis of the effect of this eye position discrepancy on the trajectory of the eventual evoked saccade can clarify the oculomotor role of the structure stimulated. The colliding saccade paradigm of microstimulation was used in the present study to investigate the type of signals conveyed by visual, visuomovement, and movement unit activities in the primate frontal eye field. Colliding saccades elicited from all sites were found to compensate for the portion of the initial movement occurring between stimulation and evoked movement onset, plus a portion of the initial movement occurring before stimulation. This finding suggests that activity in the frontal eye field encodes a retinotopic goal that is converted by a downstream structure into the vector of the eventual saccade.