Supplementary eye fields

Supplementary eye fields (SEF) are areas on the dorsal-medial surface of frontal lobe of the primate brain that are involved in planning and control of saccadic eye movements. The SEF was first characterized by John Schlag and colleagues as an area where low intensity electrical stimulation can evoke saccades, similar to the more lateral frontal eye fields. More recently it was shown that SEF stimulation produces coordinated gaze movements of both the eyes and head. Neural recordings in the SEF show signals related to both vision and saccades somewhat like the frontal eye fields and superior colliculus, but currently most investigators think that the SEF has a special role in high level aspects of saccade control, like complex spatial transformations, learned transformations , and executive cognitive functions.