Role of the different frontal lobe areas in the control of the horizontal component of memory-guided saccades in man

Two paradigms of memory-guided saccades were studied in 14 patients with focal vascular lesions affecting either the frontal eye field (FEF), or the supplementary eye field (SEF) or Brodmann's area 46 in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), and in 13 age-matched control subjects. In the first paradigm, the subject had to remember the position of a visual target with the body immobile and, in the second, the position towards which gaze was directed before a body rotation, i.e. with a vestibular input. In control subjects, the percentage of error in saccade accuracy (horizontal component) was greater in the second than in the first paradigm (37% and 14% on average, respectively). Compared with controls, amplitude error was significantly increased in the FEF group for the first paradigm only, in the SEF group for the second paradigm only, and in the PFC group for both paradigms. These results are consistent with (1) the PFC providing an improvement in the utilization by the saccade system of the visual and vestibular signals used in the two paradigms, and (2) the FEF and SEF providing an improvement in the utilization of visual signals in the first paradigm and vestibular signals in the second paradigm, respectively. Furthermore, from these findings and experimental data, it may be hypothesized (1) that the PFC is a part of the network contributing to short-term memorization of both visual and vestibular signals, and (2) that the FEF and SEF control two different types of memory-guided saccades, with separate calculation modes to determine their amplitude.

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