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Gaze holding in healthy subjects
Giovanni Bertolini1, Alexander A Tarnutzer, Itsaso Olasagasti
1Department of Neurology, University Hospital Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland. bertoweb@gmail.com
Plos One
|May 3, 2013
Summary
In darkness, eye drift velocity increases non-linearly with gaze eccentricity beyond 20 degrees. This suggests the brain optimizes gaze-holding for typical ranges, with performance declining at extreme eccentricities.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Ophthalmology
- Vision Science
Background:
- Eccentric gaze in darkness causes minor eye drifts, usually compensated by cerebellar control.
- The leaky integrator model assumes linear eye velocity growth with gaze eccentricity, but this may not hold for large angles.
Purpose of the Study:
- To characterize gaze-evoked drift in healthy subjects at eccentric gaze angles.
- To investigate the linearity of eye velocity with gaze eccentricity.
Main Methods:
- Recorded horizontal eye position in 20 healthy subjects fixating a quasi-stationary flashing dot in darkness.
- Subjects fixated targets displacing between ± 40 degrees horizontally.
- Analyzed linearity by comparing slopes of linear fits to eye velocity within different gaze eccentricity bins.
Main Results:
- Gaze-evoked drift velocity remained weak across all tested angles.
- Eye velocity slopes were significantly lower for 0-20 degrees compared to 20-40 degrees eccentricity (median ratio 0.41).
- A tangent function, not a linear model, better described population position-velocity curves at large eccentricities.
Conclusions:
- Gaze-holding linearity is optimized for common gaze ranges, not extreme eccentricities.
- Non-linearity at eccentric gaze may stem from neural network input saturation.
- Gaze-holding performance degrades more rapidly at larger eccentricities.
