From Circuits to Behaviour: Neural Mechanisms of Saccadic Eye Movements

The neural control of oculomotor behaviour has advanced rapidly in recent years, with particular emphasis on the mechanisms underlying saccadic eye movements. Saccades—rapid, ballistic eye movements that reorient gaze—serve as a powerful model system for understanding how neural circuits transform sensory inputs and internal goals into motor commands. While key structures such as the superior colliculus, frontal eye fields, and cerebellum have been extensively studied, fundamental questions remain regarding how distributed circuits coordinate to initiate, modulate, and adapt saccades across different behavioural and cognitive contexts.

Recent methodological advances, including high-resolution electrophysiology, circuit-level perturbations (e.g., optogenetics and pharmacological manipulations), and computational modelling, have provided new insights into the dynamic patterns of neural activity and their direct links to behaviour and decision-making. Ongoing debates centre around the architectural principles of saccadic command circuits, the interplay between bottom-up and top-down signals, and the neural computations underlying target selection and movement initiation.

Although causal manipulations using optogenetics, pharmacological perturbations, and neuroimaging have uncovered new aspects of circuit function, an integrated understanding across levels of analysis is still lacking. There is a growing need to bridge the gap between cellular/microcircuit mechanisms and systems-level behavioural outcomes, as well as to connect empirical findings with predictive computational models.

This Research Topic aims to bring together cutting-edge studies that investigate the neural basis of saccadic eye movements from circuit dynamics to behaviour. By fostering interdisciplinary contributions, this collection seeks to advance our understanding of how neural circuits generate, control, and adapt saccadic behaviour. This Topic uniquely aims to integrate microcircuit-level mechanisms with systems-level computation and behavioral outcomes, bridging primate, rodent, and computational approaches.

To gather further insights into the neural mechanisms of saccadic eye movements and their relationship to behaviour, we welcome articles addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:

• Circuit-level mechanisms of saccade generation and control
• Causal manipulation of neural circuits underlying saccadic behaviour
• Electrophysiological correlates of saccade planning and execution
• Computational and theoretical models of saccadic targeting, timing, and adaptation
• Interactions between saccadic eye movements, perception, decision-making, and cognitive modulation.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Clinical Trial
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Clinical Trial
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Review
• Systematic Review

Keywords: Visual decision-making, eye movements, oculomotor circuits, neural circuit dynamics, primate neuroscience

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.