[Optokinetic nystagmus (OKN) eye-movement mediated by direct and indirect pathways]

Nasal or temporal side of the cat's retina was stimulated with nasalward and temporalward moving patterns for investigating the neural control of the optokinetic nystagmus in the direct and indirect pathways of OKN. The experimental data demonstrated that there was a nasalward directional preference in cat's OKN system under both close loop and open loop conditions, and the nasalward OKN gain evoked by stimulation of nasal retina was much higher than that at temporal retina. This indicates that OKN nasalward preference is mainly derived from the nasal retina, i.e. the direct pathway of OKN dominates the indirect pathway in cat's OKN system. The gains of temporalward and nasalward OKN from temporal retina are much less than those of nasalward OKN from nasal retina. It is suggested that the indirect pathway of OKN in the cat only possesses a supplementary function, which probably plays an important role in temporalward OKN eye-movements in relation to binocular vision.