Citation

Blohm G, Lefevre P. J. Neurophysiol. 2010; 104(4): 2103-2115.

Affiliation

Queen's University.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, American Physiological Society)

DOI

10.1152/jn.00728.2009

PMID

20719930

Abstract

Smooth pursuit eye movements are driven by retinal motion signals. These retinal motion signals are converted into motor commands that obey Listing's law (i.e. no accumulation of ocular torsion). The fact that smooth pursuit follows Listing's law is often taken as evidence that no explicit reference frame transformation between the retinal velocity input and the head-centered motor command is required. Such eye-position dependent reference frame transformations between eye- and head-centered coordinates have been well-described for saccades to static targets. Here, we suggest that such an eye (and head) position-depended reference frame transformation is also required for target motion (i.e. velocity) driving smooth pursuit eye movements. Therefore, we tested smooth pursuit initiation under different 3D eye positions and compared human performance to model simulations. We specifically tested (1) if the ocular rotation axis changed with vertical eye position; (2) if the misalignment of the spatial and retinal axes during oblique fixations was taken into account; and (3) if ocular torsion (due to head roll) was compensated for. If no eye-position dependent velocity transformation was used, the pursuit initiation should follow the retinal direction, independently of eye position; in contrast, a correct visuomotor velocity transformation would result in spatially correct pursuit initiation. Overall, subjects accounted for all three components of the visuomotor velocity transformation, but we did observe differences in the compensatory gains between individual subjects. We concluded that the brain does perform a visuomotor velocity transformation, but that this transformation was prone to noise and inaccuracies of the internal model.

Language: en