Smooth pursuit eye movements elicited by somatosensory stimulation

Smooth pursuit eye movements approaching the qualitative and quantitative characteristics of those elicited by a moving visual target were obtained in complete darkness with a moving tactile stimulus. Pursuit eye movements in response to tactile stimulation have longer latencies to onset and to offset of pursuit, are more often interrupted by saccades, and provide less accurate stimulus localization than those in response to moving visual stimuli. The evocation of pursuit eye movements by a somatosensory input suggests that within the appropriate velocity domain a spatially changing sensory input from any modality may be sufficient to elicit ocular pursuit.