Smooth pursuit eye movements elicited by pseudorandom target motion in normal subjects

The purpose of this study was to determine which test conditions are appropriate for clinical examination of predictive control ability in smooth pursuit eye movements (SPEM). A combination of sinusoidal and pseudorandom target motion was employed to examine SPEM. Pseudorandom waves were generated by summing sinusoidal components spaced at 0.05 Hz intervals over three frequency ranges: 0.05 to 0.5 Hz, 0.05 to 1 Hz and 0.05 to 1.5 Hz. The peak amplitude of the resultant target waveform was set at 30 degrees. Testing was performed with 8 normal subjects. The results indicate a SPEM gain of 0.9 for 0.05-0.5 Hz, 0.7 for 0.05-1 Hz and 0.3 for 0.05-1.5 Hz. It is concluded that the pseudorandom wave of 0.05 to 1 Hz in frequency range is most suitable for clinical use.