Visually induced cycloversion and cyclovergence

Abstract

Binocular cyclorotatory (torsional) eye movements in response to visual patterns, which oscillated sinusoidally in the frontal plane, were recorded with scleral induction coils in human subjects. Conjugate cycloversion and disjunctive cyclovergence were directly compared by in-phase and out-of-phase oscillation of the same pattern. Stimulus motion had a frequency of 0.2 Hz and amplitudes of 2-8 deg. Both response types had a similar and low gain (about 0.2 averaged over all subjects). Cycloversion showed no time lag, while cyclovergence lagged by about 600 msec. Non-fusible patterns were effective in eliciting cycloversion, but not cyclovergence. Apart from this, the nature of the pattern (randomly distributed dots, regular rows of dots, horizontal or vertical grating, Julesz stereogram or images with a pictorial significance) had only the slightest effect on the magnitude of the responses.