On nystagmus, saccades, and fixations.

Full Abstract

Investigations of the ways in which the eyes move came to prominence in the 19th century, but techniques for measuring them more precisely emerged in the 20th century. When scanning a scene or text the eyes engage in periods of relative stability (fixations) interspersed with ballistic rotations (saccades). The saccade-and-fixate strategy, associated with voluntary eye movements, was first uncovered in the context of involuntary eye movements following body rotation. This pattern of eye movements is now referred to as nystagmus, and involves periods of slow eye movements, during which objects are visible, and rapid returns, when they are not; it is based on a vestibular reflex which attempts to achieve image stabilisation. Post-rotational nystagmus was reported in the late 18th century (by Wells), with afterimages used as a means of retinal stabilisation to distinguish between movement of the eyes and of the environment. Nystagmus was linked to vestibular stimulation in the 19th century, and Mach, Breuer, and Crum Brown all described its fast and slow phases. Wells and Breuer proposed that there was no visual awareness during the ballistic phase (saccadic suppression). The saccade-and-fixate strategy highlighted by studies of nystagmus was shown to apply to tasks like reading by Dodge, who used more sophisticated photographic techniques to examine oculomotor kinematics. The relationship between eye movements and perception, following earlier intuitions by Wells and Breuer, was explored by Dodge, and has been of fundamental importance in the direction of vision research over the last century.

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Author information

Author/s: Tatler, Benjamin W (BW); Wade, Nicholas J (NJ);

Affiliation: Sussex Centre for Neuroscience, School of Biological Sciences, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QG, UK. B.W.Tatler(-atsign-)sussex.ac.uk

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Historical Article; Journal Article; Portraits

Journal: Perception (Perception), published in England. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2003-; vol 32 (issue 2) : pp 167-84

Dates: Created 2003/04/16; Completed 2003/06/04; Revised 2008/11/21;

PMID: 12696663, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Humans
Nystagmus, Physiologic - physiology
Ophthalmology - history
Saccades - physiology
Vestibule, Labyrinth - physiology
Visual Perception - physiology

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