Enhancement of the vestibulo-ocular reflex by prior eye movements

We investigated the effect of visually mediated eye movements made before velocity-step horizontal head rotations in eleven normal human subjects. When subjects viewed a stationary target before and during head rotation, gaze velocity was initially perturbed by approximately 20% of head velocity; gaze velocity subsequently declined to zero within approximately 300 ms of the stimulus onset. We used a curve-fitting procedure to estimate the dynamic course of the gain throughout the compensatory response to head rotation. This analysis indicated that the median initial gain of compensatory eye movements (mainly because of the vestibulo-ocular reflex, VOR) was 0. 8 and subsequently increased to 1.0 after a median interval of 320 ms. When subjects attempted to fixate the remembered location of the target in darkness, the initial perturbation of gaze was similar to during fixation of a visible target (median initial VOR gain 0.8); however, the period during which the gain increased toward 1.0 was >10 times longer than that during visual fixation. When subjects performed horizontal smooth-pursuit eye movements that ended (i.e., 0 gaze velocity) just before the head rotation, the gaze velocity perturbation at the onset of head rotation was absent or small. The initial gain of the VOR had been significantly increased by the prior pursuit movements for all subjects (P < 0.05; mean increase of 11%). In four subjects, we determined that horizontal saccades and smooth tracking of a head-fixed target (VOR cancellation with eye stationary in the orbit) also increased the initial VOR gain (by a mean of 13%) during subsequent head rotations. However, after vertical saccades or smooth pursuit, the initial gaze perturbation caused by a horizontal head rotation was similar to that which occurred after fixation of a stationary target. We conclude that the initial gain of the VOR during a sudden horizontal head rotation is increased by prior horizontal, but not vertical, visually mediated gaze shifts. We postulate that this "priming" effect of a prior gaze shift on the gain of the VOR occurs at the level of the velocity inputs to the neural integrator subserving horizontal eye movements, where gaze-shifting commands and vestibular signals converge.