PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Morteza Sadeh
AU  - Amirsaman Sajad
AU  - Hongying Wang
AU  - Xiaogang Yan
AU  - John Douglas Crawford
TI  - Timing Determines Tuning: A Rapid Spatial Transformation in Superior Colliculus Neurons during Reactive Gaze Shifts
AID  - 10.1523/ENEURO.0359-18.2019
DP  - 2020 Jan 01
TA  - eneuro
PG  - ENEURO.0359-18.2019
VI  - 7
IP  - 1
4099  - http://www.eneuro.org/content/7/1/ENEURO.0359-18.2019.short
4100  - http://www.eneuro.org/content/7/1/ENEURO.0359-18.2019.full
SO  - eNeuro2020 Jan 01; 7
AB  - Gaze saccades, rapid shifts of the eyes and head toward a goal, have provided fundamental insights into the neural control of movement. For example, it has been shown that the superior colliculus (SC) transforms a visual target (T) code to future gaze (G) location commands after a memory delay. However, this transformation has not been observed in “reactive” saccades made directly to a stimulus, so its contribution to normal gaze behavior is unclear. Here, we tested this using a quantitative measure of the intermediate codes between T and G, based on variable errors in gaze endpoints. We demonstrate that a rapid spatial transformation occurs within the primate’s SC (Macaca mulatta) during reactive saccades, involving a shift in coding from T, through intermediate codes, to G. This spatial shift progressed continuously both across and within cell populations [visual, visuomotor (VM), motor], rather than relaying discretely between populations with fixed spatial codes. These results suggest that the SC produces a rapid, noisy, and distributed transformation that contributes to variable errors in reactive gaze shifts.