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. 2018 May 28;9:346. doi: 10.3389/fneur.2018.00346

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Copyright © 2018 Otero-Millan, Optican, Macknik and Martinez-Conde.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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Simulation of 5 s of fixation in (A) healthy observers (i.e., using normal parameters), (B) Parkinson’s disease (PD), (C) progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), and (D) spinocerebellar ataxia. Panels (E,F) show the microsaccade magnitude, rate, and velocity (main sequence slope) of three populations of healthy controls, PSP patients, and PD patients from a previous study (12). Panels (G,H) show the relationship between microsaccade magnitude, rate, and velocity as we vary two parameters of the simulations. Each line represents a set of simulations with the same burst neuron (BN) gain but varying amounts of noise. As noise increases, the rate (and to some extent the amplitude) of microsaccades increases. Peak velocity is not affected by the noise as long as the BN gain is normal. As we lower the BN gain, the velocity of microsaccades decreases while their amplitude increases. The microsaccade rate also decreases, but in the case of the PSP that is compensated by higher noise.