The Journal of Neurophysiology Vol. 78 No. 1 July 1997, pp. 533-538
Copyright ©1997 The American Physiological Society

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Local Feedback Signals Are Not Distorted By Prior Eye Movements: Evidence From Visually Evoked Double Saccades

H.H.L.M. Goossens and A. J. Van Opstal

Department of Medical Physics and Biophysics, University of Nijmegen, 6500 HB Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Goossens, H.H.L.M. and A. J. Van Opstal. Local feedback signals are not distorted by prior eye movements: evidence from visually evoked double saccades. J. Neurophysiol. 78: 533-538, 1997. Recent experiments have shown that the amplitude and direction of saccades evoked by microstimulation of the monkey superior colliculus depend systematically on the amplitude and direction of preceding visually guided saccades as well as on the postsaccade stimulation interval. The data are consistent with the hypothesis that an eye displacement integrator in the local feedback loop of the saccadic burst generator is gradually reset with a time constant of ~45 ms. If this is true, similar effects should occur during naturally evoked saccade sequences, causing systematic interval-dependent errors. To test this prediction in humans, saccades toward visual single- and double-step stimuli were elicited, and the properties of the second saccades were investigated as a function of the intersaccadic interval (ISI). In 15-20% of the saccadic responses, ISIs fell well below 100 ms. The errors of the second saccades were not systematically affected by the preceding primary saccade, irrespective of the ISI. Only a slight increase in the endpoint variability of second saccades was observed for the shortest ISIs. These results are at odds with the hypothesis that the putative eye displacement integrator has a reset time constant >10 ms. Instead, it is concluded that the signals involved in the internal feedback control of the saccadic burst generator reflect eye position and/or eye displacement accurately, irrespective of preceding eye movements.

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