Supplementary Eye Fields

Supplementary eye fields (SEF) are areas on the dorsal-medial surface of frontal lobe of the primate brain that are involved in planning and control of saccadic eye movements. The SEF was first characterized by John Schlag and colleagues as an area where low intensity electrical stimulation can evoke saccades, similar to the more lateral frontal eye fields. More recently it was shown that SEF stimulation produces coordinated gaze movements of both the eyes and head. Neural recordings in the SEF show signals related to both vision and saccades somewhat like the frontal eye fields and superior colliculus, but currently most investigators think that the SEF has a special role in high level aspects of saccade control, like complex spatial transformations, learned transformations, and executive cognitive functions.

Famous quotes containing the words eye and/or fields:

    There is all the difference in the world between the criminal’s avoiding the public eye and the civil disobedient’s taking the law into his own hands in open defiance. This distinction between an open violation of the law, performed in public, and a clandestine one is so glaringly obvious that it can be neglected only by prejudice or ill will.
    Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)

    When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and woods: what would become of us, if we walked only in a garden or a mall?
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)