Use of plaid patterns to distinguish the corticofugal and direct retinal inputs to the brainstem optokinetic nystagmus generator.

We have recorded the direction of optokinetic nystagmus (OKN) elicited by moving plaid patterns in order to dissociate the pathways that mediate horizontal OKN. The plaids used comprised two drifting sinusoidal gratings arranged such that their individual directions of drift were very different from the direction of coherent motion of the overall pattern. The direction of OKN with binocular viewing was close to the mean of the component directions, suggesting a dominant influence of cortical visual neurons that respond to oriented one-dimensional components of the image. But the direction of OKN was consistently shifted slightly towards the direction of motion of the overall pattern, suggesting a secondary influence responsive to pattern direction. OKN recordings obtained during monocular viewing suggest that this secondary influence reflects the direct retinal pathway to the brainstem structures mediating OKN.