Abstract
Eye movements serve vision by placing the image of an object of regard on the fovea of each retina and by preventing slippage of images on the retina. The brain has two modes of oculomotor control: Fast eye movements (saccades) and smooth (slow)-pursuit eye movements (SPEM). Fast eye movements bring the fovea to targets that fall on the extrafoveal retina, and SPEM maintain fixation of slowly moving targets. Six distinct oculomotor systems (saccades, smooth pursuit, VOR, vergence, optokinetics, and fixation) are utilized to fulfill the task. This brief survey will concentrate mainly on saccadic and SPEM disturbances in rostral brain-stem pathology. A review of basic anatomy and physiology of the oculomotor system will allow a better understanding of the pathogenetic mechanisms underlying the complex oculomotor brain-stem syndromes.
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© 1993 Springer-Verlag Berlin · Heidelberg
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Kömpf, D. (1993). Oculomotor Syndromes in Rostral Brain-Stem Lesions. In: Caplan, L.R., Hopf, H.C. (eds) Brain-Stem Localization and Function. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-78172-8_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-78172-8_12
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
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