The Optomotor Reflexes in Strabismus

Abstract

As we have seen in the first chapter, the idea that the eye movements and vision and everything connected therewith are based upon events of a reflex nature has already existed for a long time and has become a conviction for many scientists, thanks in no small measure to Zeeman’s outline of its formation and nature. But even without the work of Pavlov and Zeeman, the unprejudiced investigator would find that the mere observation of what takes place in this field in the newborn and baby was sufficient to convince him that all this was due to nothing else than the play of reflex forces. It is certain that any notions of conscious mental participation in any form whatever — whereby it should be remembered that although conscious processes are cerebral processes the converse is certainly not true — or voluntary reactions, at this primitive stage of life, have to be rejected on anatomical and physiological grounds.

An erratum to this chapter is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-6770-5_12