Sensory-to-motor transformations in the vestibular system

The vestibulo-ocular reflex is a compensatory reflex that results in eye movements that are 180 degrees out of phase with movements of the head but that match head velocity. Because of these reflex eye movements that are equal, but opposite to head movement, the viewed object remains on the fovea of the retina during head movement, thus resulting in visual acuity that is not degraded by visual image slip on the retina. This reflex is compensatory over a large spectrum of head movements in any plane of space. This is accomplished by a spatial and temporal transformation of the input from the vestibular semicircular canals to the motoneurons that innervate the extraocular muscles. The reflex is a three-neuron arc. The middle leg of the reflex is accomplished by secondary vestibular neurons whose axons branch to innervate more than one extraocular muscle. These secondary neurons thus program an eye movement rather than the contraction of a single extraocular muscle. These programmed eye movements that match the plane of the particular semicircular canal that is the input to the reflex constitute the spatial transformation. Primary vestibular afferents innervating the semicircular canals have a broad range of response dynamics that either lead, lag or are in phase with head velocity. The predominant vestibular primary afferent input to the middle leg of the reflex, the same secondary neurons as mentioned above, is parcellated so that afferents more in phase with head velocity predominate.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)