Coordination of eye and head movements during smooth pursuit in patients with vestibular failure

During pursuit of smoothly moving targets with combined eye and head movements in normal subjects, accurate gaze control depends on successful interaction of the vestibular and head movement signals with the ocular pursuit mechanisms. To investigate compensation for loss of the vestibulo-ocular reflex during head-free pursuit in labyrinthine-deficient patients, pursuit performance was assessed and compared under head-fixed and head-free conditions in five patients with isolated bilateral loss of vestibular function. Target motion consisted of predictable and unpredictable pseudo-random waveforms containing the sum of three or four sinusoids. Comparison of slow-phase gaze velocity gains under head-free and head-fixed conditions revealed no significant differences during pursuit of any of the three pseudo-random waveforms. The finding of significant compensatory eye movement during active head movements in darkness in labyrinthine-deficient patients, which were comparable in character and gain to the vestibular eye movement elicited in normal subjects, probably explains the similarity of the head-fixed and head-free responses. In two additional patients with cerebellar degeneration and vestibular failure, no compensatory eye movement response was observed, implying that the cerebellum is necessary for the generation of such responses in labyrinthine-deficient patients.