TY - JOUR
T1 - Rapid Head Movements in Common Marmoset Monkeys
AU - Pandey, Swarnima
AU - Simhadri, Sravanthi
AU - Zhou, Yi
N1 - Funding Information:
Rachele McAndrew and Kyle Labban assisted with animal preparation during data collection. Kelvin Tran and Maggie Zhou examined the video recordings and calculated response times (latency) of head turns. Drs. Brad May and M. Torben Pastore provided insightful discussions on the interpretations of the results. Elizabeth Teret offered suggestions to the manuscript preparation. We appreciate their inputs to our work. This research was supported by a grant from National Science Foundation (NSF BCS-1539376 to Y.Z.).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020
PY - 2020/2/21
Y1 - 2020/2/21
N2 - Gaze shifts, the directing of the eyes to an approaching predator, preferred food source, or potential mate, have universal biological significance for the survival of a species. Our knowledge of gaze behavior is based primarily on visually triggered responses, whereas head orientation triggered by auditory stimuli remains poorly characterized. Common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus) is a diurnal, small-bodied (∼350 g), New World monkey species, known for its rich behavioral repertoires during social interactions. We used a lightweight head tracking system to measure marmosets' reflexive head orientations toward a natural stimulus presented from behind. We found that marmoset could rotate its head at angular velocities above 1,000°/s and maintained target accuracy for a wide range of rotation amplitudes (up to 250°). This unusual, saccadic head orienting behavior offers opportunities for understanding the many biological factors that have shaped the evolution of sensorimotor controls of gaze orientation by the primate brain.
AB - Gaze shifts, the directing of the eyes to an approaching predator, preferred food source, or potential mate, have universal biological significance for the survival of a species. Our knowledge of gaze behavior is based primarily on visually triggered responses, whereas head orientation triggered by auditory stimuli remains poorly characterized. Common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus) is a diurnal, small-bodied (∼350 g), New World monkey species, known for its rich behavioral repertoires during social interactions. We used a lightweight head tracking system to measure marmosets' reflexive head orientations toward a natural stimulus presented from behind. We found that marmoset could rotate its head at angular velocities above 1,000°/s and maintained target accuracy for a wide range of rotation amplitudes (up to 250°). This unusual, saccadic head orienting behavior offers opportunities for understanding the many biological factors that have shaped the evolution of sensorimotor controls of gaze orientation by the primate brain.
KW - Behavioral Neuroscience
KW - Biological Sciences
KW - Neuroscience
KW - Sensory Neuroscience
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85078666349&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85078666349&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.isci.2020.100837
DO - 10.1016/j.isci.2020.100837
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85078666349
SN - 2589-0042
VL - 23
JO - iScience
JF - iScience
IS - 2
M1 - 100837
ER -