The effect of blinks on the saccade frequency before the onset of step ramp smooth pursuit was assessed in healthy controls. Blinks elicited before smooth pursuit onset suppressed saccades in contrast to a control and a gap paradigm. The source of blink associated suppression of saccades remains unclear but is probably not caused by visual signals or the omnipause neurons.

Real autonomous systems are very difficult to design, mainly due to the ever changing conditions of the environments where they are supposed to work. In the area of humanoid robotics these difficulties are increased not only because of the complexity of their mechanical structure, above all because they are supposed to work under the same dynamic conditions as we humans do. Our approach for the...

Sleep restrictions and sleep deprivation have become common in modern society, as many people report daily sleep below the recommended 8 hours per night. This study aimed to examine the effects of sleep deprivation on oculomotor performance by recording smooth pursuit and saccadic eye movements after 24 and 36 hours of sleep deprivation. Another objective was to determine whether detected chang...

The flocculus and ventral paraflocculus are adjacent regions of the cerebellar cortex that are essential for controlling smooth pursuit eye movements and for altering the performance of the vestibulo-ocular reflex (VOR). The question addressed in this study is whether these regions of the cerebellum are more globally involved in controlling gaze, regardless of whether eye or active head movemen...

During courtship, male blowflies perform aerobatic pursuits that rank among the fastest visual behaviours that can be observed in nature. The viewing strategies during pursuit behaviour of blowflies appear to be very similar to eye movements during pursuit in primates: a combination of smooth pursuit and catch-up saccades. Whereas in primates these two components of pursuit eye movements are th...

Much controversy remains about the site of learning and memory for vestibuloocular reflex (VOR) adaptation in spite of numerous previous studies. One possible explanation for VOR adaptation is the flocculus hypothesis, which assumes that this adaptation is caused by synaptic plasticity in the cerebellar cortex. Another hypothesis is the model proposed by Lisberger that assumes that the learning...

When the eyes and arm are involved in a tracking task, the characteristics of each system differ from those observed when they act alone: smooth pursuit (SP) latency decreases from 130 ms in external target tracking tasks to 0 ms in self-moved target tracking tasks. Two models have been proposed to explain this coordination. The common command model suggests that the same command be addressed t...