Pursuit and Saccadic Eye Movement Subregions in Human Frontal Eye Field: A High-resolution fMRI Investigation

Abstract

Recent positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies in humans have localized the frontal eye field (FEF) to the precentral sulcus (PCS). In macaque monkeys, low-threshold microstimulation and single unit recording studies have located a saccadic subregion of FEF in a restricted area along the anterior wall of the arcuate sulcus and a pursuit subregion located deeper in the sulcus close to the fundus. The functional organization and anatomical location of these two FEF subregions are still to be defined in humans. In the present study, we used fMRI with high spatial resolution image acquisition at 3.0 Tesla to map the saccade- and pursuit-related areas of FEF within the two walls of the PCS in 11 subjects. We localized the saccade-related area to the upper portion of the anterior wall of the precentral sulcus and the pursuit-related area to a deeper region along the anterior wall, extending in some subjects to the fundus or deep posterior wall. These findings localize distinct pursuit and saccadic subregions of FEF in humans and demonstrate a high degree of homology in the organization of these FEF subregions in the human and the macaque monkey.

Structural neural networks subserving oculomotor function in first-episode schizophrenia

“…Functional imaging studies of pursuit (e.g. Rosano et al 2002;Petit & Haxby, 1999) and antisaccade performance (e.g. Curtis & D'Esposito, 2003;O'Driscoll et al 1995) in healthy controls do not report significant laterality effects for SEF and FEF oculomotor areas.…”

“…There was no overlap between this area and that related to antisaccade errors. However, activation studies show that although saccades and smooth pursuit activate the same oculomotor regions, the areas mediating saccades and pursuit are actually distinct and are located in near-by but different areas (Berman et al 1999, Petit andHaxby, 1999;Rosano et al 2002). Berman et al (1999 demonstrated that smooth pursuit and saccades activated the anterior and posterior cingulate cortex with the spatial extent being greater for pursuit in the posterior cingulate, which may have a role in integrating sensory and motor signals, which is especially important for sustained pursuit performance.…”

“…Functional imaging studies have provided evidence for two separate but parallel cortical systems that subserve pursuit and saccadic eye movements in humans (Petit & Haxby, 1999;Berman et al 1999;Rosano et al 2002). However, few studies have used imaging techniques to examine the structural neural correlates of smooth pursuit and saccadic eye movement abnormalities in schizophrenia, although this approach has been used to investigate neural correlates of cognitive abnormalities with some success (Delisi et al 1991;Sullivan et al 1996, Stratta et al 1997Szeszko et al 2002 andMeisenzahl et al 2004;Salgado-Pineda et al 2004).…”

Three-dimensional locations and boundaries of motor and premotor cortices as defined by functional brain imaging: A meta-analysis

“…LPMC is bounded by FEF (area 8) where the precentral sulcus intersects the superior frontal sulcus and recent work suggests that FEF is contained in the depths of the precentral sulcus (Rosano et al, 2002). On the other hand, two previous reviews of functional imaging data showed that FEF appeared to include the rostral most portion of the precentral gyrus (Paus, 1996;Petit et al, 1999).…”

The involvement of the fronto-parietal brain network in oculomotor sequence learning using fMRI

“…The Frontal Eye Fields (FEF) contain sub-regions for pursuit and saccades (Petit, Clark, Ingeholm, & Haxby, 1997;Petit & Haxby, 1999;Rosano et al, 2002) and previous evidence supports the role of the FEF in memory and more specifically, spatial priming (Offen, Gardner, Schluppeck, & Heeger, O Shea Muggleton Cowey Walsh as neuronal firing often reveals pre-target build-up (Dorris & Munoz, 1998) that is modulated by a previously known target location (Connolly, Goodale, Goltz, & Munoz, 2005). Our MVPA analysis also revealed a significant ability to classify whether the data was from sequence 1 or sequence 4 within this area, indicating that this area is important for the accumulation of information during learning.…”