Vestibulo-ocular reflexes are essential components in the perception and control of spatial orientation. They are also important for the perception of the visual world, as well as visually-guided behavior, since we view the world from a constantly shifting platform and certain visual mechanisms function optimally only if the images on the retina are relatively stable. As we go about our everyday activities, visual and vestibular mechanisms help to stabilize our gaze on objects of interest, by generating eye movements that offset our head movements. The traditional approach emphasized mechanisms that deal with rotational disturbances. More recently, however, it has become clear that a separate class of vestibulo-ocular reflexes exists (Translational VORs or TVORs) that represent a phylogenetically recent acquisition in the evolutionary tree and which appear to have evolved in parallel with foveal vision, vergence eye movements and stereopsis. This proposal is a competitive renewal to test specific hypotheses about how sensory information is centrally processed in order to create motor commands for the TVOR. We propose novel behavioral experiments aiming at understanding specific functional hypotheses about the TVOR, as well as neurophysiological studies to understand the yet unknown neural processing. Electrophysiological data will be closely accompanied with theoretical modeling in order to delineate the vestibulo-ocular computations that underlie the organization of the complex oculomotor responses during translation. Although motivated by fundamental basic science issues, the results of this effort will provide a basis for understanding clinical deficits related to otolith system pathology and for the development of clinical tests of otolith and vestibulocerebellar function. ? ?

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Eye Institute (NEI)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01EY012814-06
Application #
6765123
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (ZRG1-IFCN-5 (03))
Program Officer
Hunter, Chyren
Project Start
1999-07-01
Project End
2008-06-30
Budget Start
2004-07-01
Budget End
2005-06-30
Support Year
6
Fiscal Year
2004
Total Cost
$392,224
Indirect Cost
Name
Washington University
Department
Anatomy/Cell Biology
Type
Schools of Medicine
DUNS #
068552207
City
Saint Louis
State
MO
Country
United States
Zip Code
63130
Laurens, Jean; Liu, Sheng; Yu, Xiong-Jie et al. (2017) Transformation of spatiotemporal dynamics in the macaque vestibular system from otolith afferents to cortex. Elife 6:
Laurens, Jean; Kim, Byounghoon; Dickman, J David et al. (2016) Gravity orientation tuning in macaque anterior thalamus. Nat Neurosci 19:1566-1568
Meng, Hui; Laurens, Jean; Blázquez, Pablo M et al. (2015) In vivo properties of cerebellar interneurons in the macaque caudal vestibular vermis. J Physiol 593:321-30
Blazquez, Pablo M; Yakusheva, Tatyana A (2015) GABA-A Inhibition Shapes the Spatial and Temporal Response Properties of Purkinje Cells in the Macaque Cerebellum. Cell Rep 11:1043-53
Meng, Hui; Blázquez, Pablo M; Dickman, J David et al. (2014) Diversity of vestibular nuclei neurons targeted by cerebellar nodulus inhibition. J Physiol 592:171-88
Laurens, Jean; Meng, Hui; Angelaki, Dora E (2013) Computation of linear acceleration through an internal model in the macaque cerebellum. Nat Neurosci 16:1701-8
Van Dijck, Gert; Van Hulle, Marc M; Heiney, Shane A et al. (2013) Probabilistic identification of cerebellar cortical neurones across species. PLoS One 8:e57669
Liu, Sheng; Gu, Yong; DeAngelis, Gregory C et al. (2013) Choice-related activity and correlated noise in subcortical vestibular neurons. Nat Neurosci 16:89-97
Laurens, Jean; Meng, Hui; Angelaki, Dora E (2013) Neural representation of orientation relative to gravity in the macaque cerebellum. Neuron 80:1508-18
Yakusheva, Tatyana A; Blazquez, Pablo M; Chen, Aihua et al. (2013) Spatiotemporal properties of optic flow and vestibular tuning in the cerebellar nodulus and uvula. J Neurosci 33:15145-60

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