On the 15 and 16 of November I participated at the 9th Okazaki-Tübingen-Beijing joint Symposium. In my talk, titled “Every spike counts: physiological tests of the role of superior colliculus motor discharge in eye movement metrics”, I showed with electrophysiological and stimulation experiments in the Superior Colliculus how the addition of a single spike during motor preparation and execution alterate eye movement kinematic. We suggest that the activity represented in the Superior Colliculus is read out by downstream premotor nuclei within the brainstem and, even at the level of single spike stimulation, whatever is the active landscape on the SC map is then implemented in the motor program.

I also contributed to another talk but given by Prof Ziad Hafed, showing physiological recordings and stimulation within the brainstem and complementing my work on the Superior Colliculus. Finally, we presented three posters human oculomotor control, perception, and neurophysiology.

Overall, the program of the symposium was very variegated, spanning from imaging to physiology and computational modeling. I look forward for the next meeting with the colleagues from Japan and China.