Mapping the Visual Sensory Onto the Visual Motor System

¹ Department of Physiology-Anatomy, University of California, Berkeley, Calif.

Recording in the brainstem of the alert macaque revealed single units whose impulse rates vary with eye position with preferred directions that are neither horizontal or vertical nor do they correspond to the direction of activity of any of the twelve extraocular muscles. The facts that these units change firing rates well before the occurrence of changes of eye position and that they are located cranial to the third nerve nucleus suggest that they are supranuclear. It is shown how these units could function in the processes by which the sensory visual input is translated into the pattern of oculomotor organization demanded by the kinematic laws of eye movement.