Role of Oculomotor Proprioception in the Visual System of the Cat

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The oculomotor muscles of various mammals contain proprioceptive receptors. In the cat these have been described as spiral endings (Bach-y-Rita and Ito, 1966) and more recently as palisade receptors (Alvarado Mallart and Pincon-Raymond, 1979). Primates, including man have oculomotor proprioceptors in the form of muscle spindles as well as myotendinous receptors (Ruskell, 1978; Richmond et al., 1984). The majority of proprioceptive fibers run extraorbitally in the ophthalmic branch (OB) of the Vth cranial nerve (Batini et al., 1975). The central connection of proprioceptive afférents is not well known anatomically. However recent evidence indicates that the first order neurons are confined to the semilunar ganglion both in cat and monkey (Porter and Spencer, 1982; Porter et al., 1983). In the monkey the brainstem terminations of these neurons are at the level of the spinal trigeminal and cuneate nuclei (Porter, 1986).KeywordsHerpes ZosterSuperior ColliculusExtraocular MuscleProprioceptive SignalProprioceptive AfferentsThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.