Non-oriented cells of the striate cortex activated during smooth pursuit eye movements and steady fixations in behaving monkeys.

Extracellular recordings were carried out in the primary visual cortex of behaving monkeys. Neurons were activated by moving a visual stimulus on their receptive fields during periods of steady fixation and by moving their receptive fields (smooth pursuit eye movements) on a motionless visual stimulus. Regarding non-oriented cells, they turned out to be activated by the visual stimulation both during steady fixations and smooth pursuit eye movements. Therefore, the non-oriented cells we studied seem not to receive an extraretinal signal related to the slow eye movements.