Face Preference and the Effect of Muscimol Inactivation of the Dentate Nucleus on Saccadic Eye Movements

Abstract

The role of the dentate nucleus of the cerebellum in saccadic eye movements is poorly understood, as is the cerebellum’s contribution to social cognition. Based on past data implicating a direct, bi-synaptic projection from the deep cerebellar nuclei to the supplementary eye fields, we have developed an image preference task in which the preference a non-human primate has for looking at images of other primates (both human and non-human) and saccadic eye movement metrics are evaluated. Using this task, the innate image preference and saccade metrics were measured, as were the changes to them after the dentate nucleus was temporarily inactivated via injection of the GABA agonist muscimol. The resultant changes to the preference of face images and the various saccade metrics were differential depending on which nucleus was injected.