Does the vestibular (Otolith) system contribute to stabilizing vision during linear transient head movement?

摘要

When the head is suddenly translated, eye movement of the vestibular (otolith) system and of the visual (smooth pursuit) system possibly contribute to stabilization of vision. To investigate how these two systems work together, we compared the eye velocity while fixating on a visual target (LVORv) or a remembered target (LVORr) during head translation with that of smooth pursuit (SP). Latency of LVORv and LVORr responses proved much shorter than that of pursuit. The eye velocity of LVORv response was close to the addition of those in LVORr and SP responses until 216 ms from motion onset. These findings suggest that the neural command signal of the otolith system is linearly added to those of the pursuit system.