Topography of supplementary eye field afferents to frontal eye field in macaque: Implications for mapping between saccade coordinate systems

Abstract Two discrete areas in frontal cortex are involved in generating saccadic eye movements—the frontal eye field (FEF) and the supplementary eye field (SEF). Whereas FEF represents saccades in a topographic retinotopic map, recent evidence indicates that saccades may be represented craniotopically in SEF. To further investigate the relationship between these areas, the topographic organization of afferents to FEF from SEF in Macaco mulatto was examined by placing injections of distinct retrograde tracers into different parts of FEF that represented saccades of different amplitudes. Central FEF (lateral area 8A), which represents saccades of intermediate amplitudes, received afferents from a larger portion of SEF than did lateral FEF (area 45), which represents shorter saccades, or medial FEF (medial area 8A), which represents the longest saccades in addition to pinna movements. Moreover, in every case the zone in SEF that innervated lateral FEF (area 45) also projected to medial FEF (area 8A). In one case, a zone in rostral SEF projected to both lateral area 8A from which eye movements were evoked by microstimulation as well as medial area 8A from which pinna movements were elicited by microstimulation. This pattern of afferent convergence and divergence from SEF onto the retinotopic saccade map in FEF is indicative of some sort of map transformation between SEF and FEF. Such a transformation would be necessary to interconnect a topographic craniotopic saccade representation in SEF with a topographic retinotopic saccade representation in FEF.