About the perverted light reaction of the pupils

Abstract

In view of the special interest of our case, we will enter here into consideration of the anatomical and physiological side of the normal light reaction and try to explain the peculiar symptom observed in the patient, which is called the perverted or paradoxical reaction of the pupils. As is known, the common oculomotor nerve innervates the muscle that lifts the upper eyelid, the four external ocular muscles: the internal, upper and lower rectus, lower oblique and two internal muscles of the eye the orbicular muscle of the pupil and the lumbar muscle, there are probably only seven muscles. The physiological conditions of the movement of the eye muscles convince us that not all of them have a separate movement. Excluding the lower oblique, which plays the role of an accessory muscle, and the orbicular muscle of the pupil, which is not rapidly contracting together with the lumbar muscle, all other muscles are so adapted to isolated movements that, it would seem, one could expect the corresponding differentiation in their nuclei.