Effects of fixational saccades on response timing in macaque lateral geniculate nucleus

Even during active fixation, small eye movements persist that might be expected to interfere with vision. Numerous brain mechanisms probably contribute to discounting this jitter. Changes in the timing of responses in the visual thalamus associated with fixational saccades are considered in this study. Activity of single neurons in alert monkey lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) was recorded during fixation while pseudorandom visual noise stimuli were presented. The position of the stimulus on the display monitor was adjusted based on eye position measurements to control for changes in retinal locations due to eye movements. A method for extracting nonstationary first-order response mechanisms was applied, so that changes around the times of saccades could be observed. Saccade-related changes were seen in both amplitude and timing of geniculate responses. Amplitudes were greatly reduced around saccades. Timing was retarded slightly during a window of about 200 ms around saccades. That is, responses became more sustained. These effects were found in both parvocellular and magnocellular neurons. Timing changes in LGN might play a role in maintaining cortical responses to visual stimuli in the presence of eye movements, compensating for the spatial shifts caused by saccades via these shifts in timing.

Response Linearity of Alert Monkey Non-Eye Movement Vestibular Nucleus Neurons During Sinusoidal Yaw Rotation

Vestibular afferents display linear responses over a range of amplitudes and frequencies, but comparable data for central vestibular neurons are lacking. To examine the effect of stimulus frequency and magnitude on the response sensitivity and linearity of non-eye movement central vestibular neurons, we recorded from the vestibular nuclei in awake rhesus macaques during sinusoidal yaw rotation at frequencies between 0.1 and 2 Hz and between 7.5 and 210°/s peak velocity. The dynamics of the neurons' responses across frequencies, while holding peak velocity constant, was consistent with previous studies. However, as the peak velocity was varied, while holding the frequency constant, neurons demonstrated lower sensitivities with increasing peak velocity, even at the lowest peak velocities tested. With increasing peak velocity, the proportion of neurons that silenced during a portion of the response increased. However, the decrease in sensitivity of these neurons with higher peak velocities of rotation was not due to increased silencing during the inhibitory portion of the cycle. Rather the neurons displayed peak firing rates that did not increase in proportion to head velocity as the peak velocity of rotation increased. These data suggest that, unlike vestibular afferents, the central vestibular neurons without eye movement sensitivity examined in this study do not follow linear systems principles even at low velocities.