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Neuroscience
Cluster Scientific Retreat |
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Department of Neurobiology Neural control of smooth pursuit It is difficult to swing a golf club the same way every stroke, or hit a baseball on every swing. Variation in how our brains record what we see, and program how we act, creates variability in our behavior. An analysis of that variation can reveal more than the overall level of precision in the system, it can tell us about the brain’s underlying computational processing. Smooth pursuit eye movement is an excellent model system for studying how sensory estimates are translated into a motor response. The driving signal for pursuit is image motion on the retina. We track objects that are moving with our eyes in order to stabilize images on the fovea, the region of high visual acuity on the retina. Movement errors in pursuit blur vision, so precision is at a premium in this sensory-motor behavior. My work has shown that variability in pursuit eye movements arises from errors in sensory estimation, challenging the dogma that precision in behavior is limited by noise in the execution of movement. Using high resolution recordings of eye movements coupled with neurophysiological recordings, I study how the brain represents sensory information and then translates those estimates into goals for movement, how the brain incorporates experience into plans for movement, and how motor systems adapt movement commands to maintain performance. 09/11/2009 |