The latency of saccades toward auditory targets in humans

Auditory targets can be used to evoke saccadic eye movements since they provide a position reference signal in space. Comparison of the characteristics of saccades evoked by both visual and auditory stimuli can give further information on the oculomotor control system. In particular, the latency of auditory saccades evoked in different experimental situations, such as the step, gap and overlap protocols, and with different starting positions of the eyes in the orbit can provide useful insight into the central processing underlying saccade generation. The aim of this chapter is to provide a review of auditory saccade characteristics and to present latency data obtained in human subjects in different experimental conditions.