The human eye movement repertoire

Abstract

This chapter covers the reasons why eye movements are made and provides a brief account of the types of eye movements (saccades, reflex stabilizing movements, smooth pursuit, and vergence) that make up the repertoire of components of the strategies used in natural tasks. It briefly outlines the individual types of eye movements that people are capable of making. It starts by exploring the eye movement machinery. This is followed by an account of the eye muscles and the neural machinery that controls them and, subsequently, brief descriptions of the different types of eye movement. It is shown that two mechanisms (the vestibule-ocular reflex and the optokinetic reflex) keep the retinal image stable during fixations despite movements of the head and the body in space.