Citation

Niechwiej-Szwedo E, Gonzalez EG, Verrier MC, Wong AM, Steinbach MJ. Vision Res. 2008; 48(5): 724-732.

Affiliation

Ocular Motor Laboratory, Vision Science Research Program, Toronto Western Hospital, Toronto, Ont., Canada.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.visres.2007.12.006

PMID

18226829

Abstract

We have previously shown that registered vergence eye position is altered while participants perform the Jendrassik Maneuver (JM). We proposed that the altered eye position signal registration is due to the effect of the JM which changes the gain of the sensory feedback from the eye muscles, possibly via the activity of non-twitch motoneurons. We conducted two studies to further extend and clarify one of our previous findings by examining whether the JM also affects registered eye position during localization in the frontal plane. Since the non-twitch motoneurons do not receive premotor input from areas involved in the programming of saccades, we hypothesized that localization responses associated with the saccadic system should not be affected by the JM. The data confirmed our prediction. We propose that the non-twitch motoneurons are involved in parametric adjustment of the proprioceptive feedback loops of the vergence but not the version eye movements.

Language: en