GABAergic Modulation of Brain Function During Prosaccade and Antisaccade Eye Movements: Evidence From Ultra-High-Field fMRI.

Overview

1. Department of Psychology, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany
2. Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Hospital Bonn, Bonn, Germany
3. Department of Ophthalmology, University Hospital Bonn, Bonn, Germany
4. Institute of Clinical Chemistry and Clinical Pharmacology, University Hospital Bonn, Bonn, Germany
5. German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE), Bonn, Germany

Abstract

Benzodiazepines act as positive allosteric modulators of the GABAA receptor and affect several motor and cognitive functions. By engaging perceptual‐motor as well as inhibitory control processes, the antisaccade task was used in previous studies to investigate effects of benzodiazepines on behavioral performance. Using a randomized, double‐blind, placebo‐controlled within‐subjects design, this study combined eye‐tracking with BOLD fMRI in order to examine the neural correlates of these effects for the first time. N = 39 healthy participants completed an antisaccade task after administration of either 1 mg lorazepam or placebo. On a behavioral level, lorazepam led to reduced (anti‐)saccadic peak velocity as well as increased (anti‐)saccadic latency. On a neural level, drug‐induced reduction of BOLD was found in a fronto‐parietal‐occipital network, including key oculomotor regions. This result was further supported by our finding of increased GABAA receptor density in the affected network. On an individual level, decline in peak velocity under lorazepam was associated with decreased neural activation in several cortical regions, including medial frontal eye fields. No interactions between drug and saccade condition (prosaccade, antisaccade) were found. Our results therefore suggest GABAergic modulation of a more general saccade‐related network rather than of specific components for inhibitory control processes. Future studies may rely on BOLD signal as a sensitive marker for benzodiazepine activity during saccadic eye movements.

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

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Data

Datasets cited

• osf:apsyv — at OSF; found in “Data Availability Statement”

Data Availability Statement

The behavioral data supporting the findings of this study are available on the Open Science Framework (OSF) at https://osf.io/apsyv/overview?view_only=885cc4b78a404e71986b47b90d889320. Due to ethical restrictions and data protection regulations, MRI data are not publicly available but are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

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Version 2, 28 September 2026

• Funding: added Claussen-Simon-Stiftung

Version 1, 27 September 2026: the first record

Recorded: type, language, journal, volume, issue, pages, dates, 14 authors, 6 keywords, 17 MeSH terms, 70 references.

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This paper

Quint, P., Schmidt, P., Mackert, S., Aslan, B., Guth, M., von der Emde, L., Lechtenboehmer, R., Faßbender, K., Baumert, P. M., Stoffel‐Wagner, B., Dolscheid‐Pommerich, R., Stirnberg, R., Stöcker, T., & Ettinger, U. (2026). GABAergic Modulation of Brain Function During Prosaccade and Antisaccade Eye Movements: Evidence From Ultra-High-Field fMRI. Human brain mapping, 47(10), e70598. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.70598

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