Saccadic eye movements evoked by electrical stimulation of the cat's visual cortex

Abstract

Eye movements were recorded with the scleral search coil method while striate cortex (area 17) was stimulated in alert cats with their heads fixed. Regardless of where stimulation was applied in the retinotopic map, eye position at the onset of stimulation strongly affected the amplitudes of evoked saccades, but had much less influence on their directions. Application of long stimulus trains evoked repeated saccades at all sites tested. Highly convergent or goal-directed saccades were not observed. Cortically evoked saccades appeared to habituate with repeated stimulation and had higher thresholds and longer latencies that those reported for saccades evoked from the superior colliculus. The directions of cortically evoked saccades generally agreed with those predicted from the retinotopic coordinates of the stimulus sites, but saccade amplitudes were usually lower than expected. It is suggested that these findings are consistent with certain characteristics of eye-head coordination in the cat's normal visual orienting behavior. The results are difficult to reconcile with the hypothesis that goal-directed saccades are a normal response to targets outside the cat's oculomotor range.