The superior colliculus, a brain region that manages eye movements, also plays a key role in higher cognitive functions like categorization and decision-making, acting like graph paper to help solve spatial problems

>The SC is a region in the brain that is evolutionarily conserved across all vertebrates, even those without a more sophisticated neocortex. It helps orient movements of the head and eyes toward visual stimuli, and it was traditionally believed to kick off reflexive motor actions by relaying inputs from upstream brain regions. However, recent research has shown that it is also involved in complex tasks like selecting an orientation point and paying attention to stimuli at different spatial locations

>“Our results show us that this area is really important for the task,” Freedman said. “Even in tasks where the animals don’t need to move their eyes or direct their attention to different places, the superior colliculus is involved in these more complex cognitive behaviors.”

>Freedman pointed out the kind of eye movements and hand gestures that humans make when we’re asked to recall something or make decisions. If someone asks what you had for dinner last night, for example, your eyes often drift upward, as if the answer were written on the ceiling. Or when weighing a decision between two choices, you might move your hands up and down like two sides of a balance scale.
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>“Some of this data might be telling us is that the reason we’re making these kinds of spatial gestures and eye movements is because the spatial parts of the brain are getting recruited into helping us perform these non-spatial cognitive functions,”

Paper: [Primate superior colliculus is causally engaged in abstract higher-order cognition | Nature Neuroscience](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-024-01744-x)

Wonder if being blind/VI causes this part of the brain to atrophy (I’m VI)