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Patients with a variety of psychiatric and neurological disorders, such as schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and Parkinson’s disease are often unable to suppress impulsive behavior. For example, those patients have a difficulty in suppressing eye movements toward a target, even when they are asked to look away from the target (anti-saccades). A team led by Associate Prof. Masaki Tanaka in the Graduate School of Medicine examined single neuronal activities in monkeys performing anti-saccades, and found that signals sent from the thalamus―the middle part of the brain―to the cerebral cortex play a role. It is well known that various diseases, including those mentioned above, accompany dysfunctions of voluntary eye movements, but underlying neural mechanisms have not been elucidated. The findings provide a promising clue for understanding the pathological physiology in those diseases, and may suggest a possible application of eye movement testing in diagnosis and evaluation of the efficacy of clinical treatments such as deep-brain stimulation and medications. The results of this study were reported in The Journal of Neuroscience on April 7, 2010.
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