Eye-Head Coordination During Active and Passive Head Rotations in the Dark

Abstract

AbstractVestibular nystagmus is believed to be related to a strategy of eye-head coordination aimed to quickly orient the gaze toward a point of interest. This was suggested by Melvill Jones in 1964. Thus, in order to give further support for the interpretation of vestibular nystagmus, the authors compared eye-head coordination during active and passive head rotations in the dark by adopting similar profiles of head movement. The experiments involved subjects that were seated in the dark wearing lightweight helmets with lamps. The subjects were advised to slowly orient their heads to a position while the profiles of their head movements were recorded. The results in this study support the hypothesis that the orienting saccades observed during active head rotation is of the same nature with the fast phases of vestibular nystagmus evoked by passive rotation.