Experiments based on physiologically-guided anatomy in the primate are proposed to help define how cortex related to visuo-oculomotor processing projects to basal ganglia, and how the main output from the basal ganglia to the superior colliculus (the nigrotectal pathway) is integrated with projections to the colliculus from the same areas of cortex. For the eye-movement related cortex, emphasis will be placed on comparing the connections of the classic prearcuate frontal eye field with those of the newly discovered supplementary eye field. We also propose to test whether inferior parietal cortex overlaps with the eye field projections. For the visual cortex, emphasis will be placed on discovering whether areas MT and V4 of the visual cortex project to the same or separate parts of the striatum and superior colliculus. The mosaic structure of the targets of these cortical outputs may be crucial to the further integration as well as to the segregation of these information lines. This issue will be studied by mapping the patchy inputs especially from the eye-field cortical areas and from MT and V4 of extrastriate cortex in relation to each other both in the matrix of the striatum and in the intermediate gray layer of the superior colliculus. The possibility that spatially distant parts of visuo-oculomotor related cortex project to nearby parts of the basal ganglia and superior colliculus thus will be tested. The ultimate goal of this work is to lay the foundation for an understanding of the role of the basal ganglia in visuo-oculomotor processing.
Showing the most recent 10 out of 19 publications
