Three-Dimensional Model of the Human Eye-Head Saccadic System

Abstract

Tweed, Douglas. Three-dimensional model of the human eye-head saccadic system. J. Neurophysiol. 77: 654–666, 1997. Current theories of eye-head gaze shifts deal only with one-dimensional motion, and do not touch on three-dimensional (3-D) issues such as curvature and Donders' laws. I show that recent 3-D data can be explained by a model based on ideas that are well established from one-dimensional studies, with just one new assumption: that the eye is driven toward a 3-D orientation in space that has been chosen so that Listing's law of the eye in head will hold when the eye-head movement is complete. As in previous, one-dimensional models, the eye and head are feedback-guided and the commands specifying desired eye position eye pass through a neural “saturation” so as to stay within the effective oculomotor range. The model correctly predicts the complex, 3-D trajectories of the head, eye in space, and eye in head in a variety of saccade tasks. And when it moves repeatedly to the same target, varying the contributions of eye and head, the model lands in different eye-in-space positions, but these positions differ only in their cyclotorsion about the line of sight, so they all point that line at the target—a behavior also seen in real eye-head saccades. Between movements the model obeys Listing's law of the eye in head and Donders' law of the head on torso, but during certain gaze shifts involving large torsional head movements, it shows marked, 8° deviations from Listing's law. These deviations are the most important untested predictions of the theory. Their experimental refutation would sink the model, whereas confirmation would strongly support its central claim that the eye moves toward a 3-D position in space chosen to obey Listing's law and, therefore, that a Listing operator exists upstream from the eye pulse generator.