It is well-known that diseases in basal ganglia result in perturbations in ocular motor control. Whereas significant efforts have been invested in documenting many characteristics of oculomotor control in such patients, they have been largely restricted to laboratory tasks, i.e., tasks designed to characterize oculomotor parameters under conditions that are not representative of the conditions dictating eye movements in real life. In the current research, we study the role of the basal ganglia in gaze control under natural viewing conditions. We tracked the eye movements of Parkinsons Disease (PD) patients during free-viewing natural time-varying images. Among the PD patients we have access to are those that are receiving deep-brain stimulation (DBS) to the subthalamic nucleus and inner sector of the globus pallidus. We measured the statistics of eye movements in these individuals, with and without DBS, and compared them with normal controls, free-viewing the same natural time-varying images. Such experiments provide direct information on the involvement of the basal ganglia in gaze control.
Send comments to Dawei Dong: dawei@hope.caltech.edu