Oculomotor behavior during pointing [paperback]

The purpose of this research project is the exploration of oculomotor behavior during goal directed arm movements in humans. Coordinated eye-hand movements are one of the most frequently used actions in order to manipulate our direct environment. Nevertheless, the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. The work and ideas build upon behavioral and neurophysiological knowledge about vision and motor control in primates. Cortical and midbrain structures control eye movements by means of functionally organized layers of neurons. Recently, in the midbrain superior colliculus (SC) an interaction of eye movements with manual motor activity has been observed. These findings provided the inspiration for our paradigm and predictions of human eye-hand coordinative motor behavior that is reported here for the first time. The experiments and methods and results are presented and discussed in detail. A quantitative neural model that might underlie the observed phenomena is presented.