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The Journal of Neuroscience, April 1, 2000, 20(7):2719-2730
Task-Dependent Constraints in Motor Control: Pinhole Goggles Make
the Head Move Like an Eye
M.
Ceylan1, 2,
D. Y. P.
Henriques1, 2,
D. B.
Tweed1, 3, and
J. D.
Crawford1, 2
1 Medical Research Council Group for Action and
Perception, and 2 Centre for Vision Research and
Departments of Psychology and Biology, York University, Toronto,
Ontario, Canada, M3J 1P3, and 3 Departments of Physiology
and Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S 1A8
In the 19th century, Donders observed that only one
three-dimensional eye orientation is used for each gaze direction.
Listing's law further specifies that the full set of eye orientation
vectors forms a plane, whereas the equivalent Donders' law for the
head, the Fick strategy, specifies a twisted two-dimensional
range. Surprisingly, despite considerable research and speculation, the biological reasons for choosing one such range over another remain obscure. In the current study, human subjects performed head-free gaze
shifts between visual targets while wearing pinhole goggles. During
fixations, the head orientation range still obeyed Donders' law, but
in most subjects, it immediately changed from the twisted Fick-like
range to a flattened Listing-like range. Further controls showed that
this was not attributable to loss of binocular vision or
increased range of head motion, nor was it attributable to blocked
peripheral vision; when subjects pointed a helmet-mounted laser toward
targets (a task with goggle-like motor demands but normal vision), the
head followed Listing's law even more closely. Donders' law of the
head only broke down (in favor of a "minimum-rotation strategy")
when head motion was dissociated from gaze. These behaviors could not
be modeled using current "Donders' operators" but were readily
simulated nonholonomically, i.e., by modulating head velocity commands
as a function of position and task. We conclude that the gaze control
system uses such velocity rules to shape Donders' law on a
moment-to-moment basis, not primarily to satisfy perceptual or anatomic
demands, but rather for motor optimization; the Fick strategy optimizes
the role of the head as a platform for eye movement, whereas
Listing's law optimizes rapid control of the eye (or head) as a gaze pointer.
Key words:
head movement; head orientation; Donders' law; Listing's law; Fick strategy; gaze saccades; nonholonomic control
Copyright © 2000 Society for Neuroscience 0270-6474/00/2072719-12$05.00/0
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