Neural pathways for eye movements during self-moved object guiding

Abstract

During an execution of visuo-manual guiding tasks, eye movements, different from those observed in oculo-motor or oculo-manual tracking, are observed. These eye movements, even being similar to smooth pursuit with catch-up saccades, could not be called “smooth pursuit”. They are anticipating instead of pursuing the object being guided. In this work we analyse the differences between the smooth pursuit with catch-up saccades and the guiding eye movements. In this work it is shown that the nature of these two types of eye movements is the same and the model on the neural dynamics of guiding eye movements is the augmented smooth pursuit model. Significant differences in parameters of both eye movement groups are explained by determining the brain areas and pathways involved, thus indicating their purpose.