{"id":1932,"date":"2008-09-16T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-09-16T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vermont.salk.edu\/news-release\/looking-versus-seeing\/"},"modified":"2008-09-16T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-09-16T07:00:00","slug":"looking-versus-seeing","status":"publish","type":"disclosure","link":"https:\/\/www.salk.edu\/de\/news-release\/looking-versus-seeing\/","title":{"rendered":"Looking versus seeing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>La Jolla, CA  \u2013 The superior colliculus has long been thought of  as a rapid orienting center of the brain that allows the eyes and head to turn swiftly  either toward or away from the sights and sounds in our environment. Now a team  of scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies has shown that the  superior colliculus does more than send out motor control commands to eye and  neck muscles.<\/p>\n<p>Two complementary studies, both led by <a href=\"\/de\/faculty\/krauzlis.html\/\">Richard Krauzlis<\/a>, Ph.D., an associate professor  in the Systems Neurobiology Laboratory at the Salk Institute, have revealed  that the superior colliculus performs supervisory functions in addition to the  motor control it has long been known for. The results are published in the Aug.  6 and Sept. 17 issues of the Journal of Neuroscience.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Beyond its classic role in motor control, the primate  superior colliculus signals to other brain areas the location of behaviorally  relevant visual objects by providing a &#8216;neural pointer&#8217; to these objects,&#8221; says  Krauzlis.<\/p>\n<p>The superior colliculus is currently under  renewed scrutiny because recent findings have suggested that it does more than  help orient the head and eyes toward something seen or heard. Results hinted that the superior colliculus might play  a role in analyzing the current environment and deciding whether one specific aspect  is worth paying closer attention to than another. Definitive proof, however, has  been lacking. <\/p>\n<p>The Salk scientists  adopted a more &#8220;naturalistic&#8221; approach in their experiments to understand this  role of the superior colliculus. Historically, physiological studies of eye  movement control have relied on individual spots of light representing visual  targets, but the real world is much more complex than a single dot on a  computer screen. &#8220;For example, we can smoothly track a large airplane, with all  its intricate visual details, by directing our gaze at its center,&#8221; explains Ziad  Hafed, Ph.D., Sloan-Swartz Fellow in the Systems Neurobiology Laboratory and  lead author on both studies. &#8220;At night, we might only be able to see the strobe  lights on the wing tips, but we are still able to track the object&#8217;s invisible  center.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Hafed designed a series of experiments where the  subjects had to infer the invisible center of a visual target consisting of two  peripheral features \u2013 much like the above airplane&#8217;s strobe lights in the night  sky \u2013 and track it for several seconds (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnl.salk.edu\/~zhafed\/tracking.mov\" target=\"_blank\">click here for movie<\/a>)  or fixate on a stationary dot while the peripheral features were moving back  and forth (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnl.salk.edu\/~zhafed\/fixation.mov\" target=\"_blank\">click here  for movie<\/a>). (The green crosshair indicates the subject&#8217;s eye position.)<\/p>\n<p>For one study, the Salk researchers recorded the  activity of single neurons in the superior colliculus while the subjects either  fixated on the stationary dot or tracked the invisible center of the moving  object. &#8220;The SC contains a topographic map of the visual space around us just as  conventional maps mirror geographical areas,&#8221; explains Hafed. &#8220;This allowed us  to record either from peripheral neurons, representing one of the &#8216;wing tips,&#8217;  or central neurons, representing the foveal location of the invisible center  that was tracked,&#8221; he adds. (The fovea, which is responsible for sharp, central vision, is located in the center of the macular region of the retina, while peripheral vision occurs outside the  center of our gaze.) <\/p>\n<p>Surprisingly, the central neurons were the most  active during this tracking behavior, despite the lack of a visual stimulus in  the center of gaze. &#8220;These neurons highlighted the behavioral importance of the  location of the invisible center, because it is this location that was the most  important for the subjects to successfully track the object,&#8221; says Krauzlis (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnl.salk.edu\/~zhafed\/rostral_neuron_track.mov\" target=\"_blank\">click here for  movie<\/a>). When the subjects ignored the invisible center, the same neurons  were significantly less active (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnl.salk.edu\/~zhafed\/rostral_neuron_fix.mov\" target=\"_blank\">click here for  movie<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>As part of the second study, the Salk  researchers, in collaboration with Laurent Goffart, Ph.D., a professor at the  Institut de Neurosciences Cognitives de la M\u00e9diterran\u00e9e in Marseille, France,  temporarily inactivated a subset of superior colliculus neurons and analyzed  the resulting changes in tracking performance. While the subjects still tracked  well, their gaze consistently and predictably shifted away from the center,  demonstrating clearly that the superior colliculus is essential for defining  the object location (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnl.salk.edu\/~zhafed\/sample_inactivation.mov\" target=\"_blank\">click here for  movie<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;By showing that the SC is not just a motor map,  but also a map of behaviorally relevant object locations, our results provide a  conceptual framework for understanding the role of the SC in non-motor  functions such as visual attention and the functional links between motor  control and sensory processing,&#8221; says Hafed.<\/p>\n<p>The Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, is an  independent nonprofit organization dedicated to fundamental discoveries in the  life sciences, the improvement of human health and the training of future  generations of researchers. Jonas Salk, M.D., whose polio vaccine all but  eradicated the crippling disease poliomyelitis in 1955, opened the Institute in  1965 with a gift of land from the City of San Diego and the financial support  of the March of Dimes.<\/p>","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","faculty":[],"disease-research":[],"class_list":["post-1932","disclosure","type-disclosure","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Looking versus seeing - Salk Institute for Biological Studies<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.salk.edu\/de\/news-release\/looking-versus-seeing\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"de_DE\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Looking versus seeing - Salk Institute for Biological Studies\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"La Jolla, CA \u2013 The superior colliculus has long been thought of as a rapid orienting center of the brain that allows the eyes and head to turn swiftly either toward or away from the sights and sounds in our environment. 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