Abstract
Saccadic eye movements, rapid shifts of eye position, were measured in male C57Bl/6 mice using newly developed infrared video-oculography with 500 Hz sampling during head-fixed binocular recordings.The video-oculography is composed of two high-speed digital video modules (max. 1kHz sampling) and a standard PC with a multi-core CPU. A custom built, multi-thread image analysis software enables on-line, simultaneous binocular tracking in a multi-processor computer.Observed saccadic eye movements were generally well-conjugated with sometimes asymmetric amplitudes and directions between both eyes.Repetitive electrical stimulation of the superior colliculus, a major brain area for generating and controlling saccadic eye movements, induced conjugate rapid eye movements similar to the spontaneous saccades. The findings suggest that the mouse, a lateral-eyed rodent, has neuronal machinery for controlling binocularly well-coordinated saccadic eye movements like other frontal eyed mammals. [J Physiol Sci. 2008;58 Suppl:S99]
