Perhaps the greatest amount of work has been devoted to the oculomotor system; specifically, the contributions of the superior colliculus (SC) to the control of saccadic eye movements have been studied because the SC receives converging sensory and motor inputs, contains neurons involved in both visual processing and the execution of saccades, and outputs a signal to the brainstem to trigger saccades. Despite an extensive body of literature, the current understanding of visual processing and the information in SC output signals remains incomplete. This thesis focuses on the information specified in an SC output signal and how motor commands are shaped by visual information. Knowledge of the details by which visual stimuli are integrated in a saccadic command signal is critical for a complete understanding of the neural basis for visually-guided movements. Studies employing single- and multi-unit recording techniques in this thesis revealed that majority of intermediate layer SC neurons transmit visual signals to the brainstem. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).
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