Interactions of the horizontal and vertical human oculomotor systems: The vertical smooth pursuit and horizontal saccadic systems

Abstract

The human oculomotor system has been studied by numerous people for well over half a century. Since the visual system is our primary sensory input channel, it is important for us to know how information is processed by the system. Most of the previous work on eye movements has been on modeling the horizontal eye movement control system. In the present series of experiments, human subjects were given the task of tracking a spot of light which moved both horizontally and vertically. The temporal relationship of the horizontal and vertical eye movements was recorded using a light reflection technique. The results of this experiment indicate that the horizontal saccadic and vertical smooth pursuit systems are parallel information processors and are not interdependent.