@article {1678,
	title = {Motion dependence of smooth pursuit eye movements in the marmoset.},
	journal = {J Neurophysiol},
	volume = {113},
	year = {2015},
	month = {2015 Jun 01},
	pages = {3954-60},
	abstract = {<p>Smooth pursuit eye movements stabilize slow-moving objects on the retina by matching eye velocity with target velocity. Two critical components are required to generate smooth pursuit: first, because it is a voluntary eye movement, the subject must select a target to pursue to engage the tracking system; and second, generating smooth pursuit requires a moving stimulus. We examined whether this behavior also exists in the common marmoset, a New World primate that is increasingly attracting attention as a genetic model for mental disease and systems neuroscience. We measured smooth pursuit in two marmosets, previously trained to perform fixation tasks, using the standard Rashbass step-ramp pursuit paradigm. We first measured the aspects of visual motion that drive pursuit eye movements. Smooth eye movements were in the same direction as target motion, indicating that pursuit was driven by target movement rather than by displacement. Both the open-loop acceleration and closed-loop eye velocity exhibited a linear relationship with target velocity for slow-moving targets, but this relationship declined for higher speeds. We next examined whether marmoset pursuit eye movements depend on an active engagement of the pursuit system by measuring smooth eye movements evoked by small perturbations of motion from fixation or during pursuit. Pursuit eye movements were much larger during pursuit than from fixation, indicating that pursuit is actively gated. Several practical advantages of the marmoset brain, including the accessibility of the middle temporal (MT) area and frontal eye fields at the cortical surface, merit its utilization for studying pursuit movements.</p>
},
	keywords = {Acceleration, Animals, Callithrix, Motion, Motion Perception, Photic Stimulation, Pursuit, Smooth, Retina, Visual Fields},
	issn = {1522-1598},
	doi = {10.1152/jn.00197.2015},
	author = {Mitchell, Jude F and Priebe, Nicholas J and Miller, Cory T}
}
@article {201,
	title = {Evidence that primary visual cortex is required for image, orientation, and motion discrimination by rats.},
	journal = {PLoS One},
	volume = {8},
	year = {2013},
	month = {2013},
	pages = {e56543},
	abstract = {<p>The pigmented Long-Evans rat has proven to be an excellent subject for studying visually guided behavior including quantitative visual psychophysics. This observation, together with its experimental accessibility and its close homology to the mouse, has made it an attractive model system in which to dissect the thalamic and cortical circuits underlying visual perception. Given that visually guided behavior in the absence of primary visual cortex has been described in the literature, however, it is an empirical question whether specific visual behaviors will depend on primary visual cortex in the rat. Here we tested the effects of cortical lesions on performance of two-alternative forced-choice visual discriminations by Long-Evans rats. We present data from one highly informative subject that learned several visual tasks and then received a bilateral lesion ablating \&gt;90\% of primary visual cortex. After the lesion, this subject had a profound and persistent deficit in complex image discrimination, orientation discrimination, and full-field optic flow motion discrimination, compared with both pre-lesion performance and sham-lesion controls. Performance was intact, however, on another visual two-alternative forced-choice task that required approaching a salient visual target. A second highly informative subject learned several visual tasks prior to receiving a lesion ablating \&gt;90\% of medial extrastriate cortex. This subject showed no impairment on any of the four task categories. Taken together, our data provide evidence that these image, orientation, and motion discrimination tasks require primary visual cortex in the Long-Evans rat, whereas approaching a salient visual target does not.</p>
},
	keywords = {Animals, Discrimination (Psychology), Discrimination Learning, Male, Motion, Orientation, Photic Stimulation, Psychomotor Performance, Rats, Visual Cortex},
	issn = {1932-6203},
	doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0056543},
	author = {Petruno, Sarah K and Clark, Robert E and Reinagel, Pamela}
}
