Several parallel channel and feedback loops have been identified in the mammalian visual and oculomotor systems. In order to better understand the dynamics of interactive information processing implied by such circuitry, our approach is to selectively and reversibly disrupt various input channels and feedback loops while we examine either the visual capacities of animals or the activity of single cells in visual and oculomotor structures. The work will be carried out on alert, trained animals involving mostly rhesus monkeys. We will examine (1) how the ON/OFF and the color-opponent/broad-band systems originating in the retina contribute to vision and visually guided eye movement, (2) how the responses of single cells to behaviorally relevant and irrelevant stimuli are influenced by various channels and feedback loops in the lateral geniculate nucleus and the visual cortex (V1-V4), and (3) how the frontal eye fields, the superior colliculi and inputs to these two structures interact to produce visually guided eye movements.
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