Saccadic Compensation for Impairment of the VOR

On examining original records of eye movement in experiments such as those described in the preceding article (Melvill Jones 1990), it is frequently found that when a normal subject tries to "look" at a remembered earth fixed target during passive rotation in the dark, the smooth trace of compensatory VOR is interspersed with quick saccadic eye movements acting in the same compensatory direction as the VOR. investigating this feature, Segal & Katsarkas (1988a) demonstrated that this is indeed a normal phenomenon, occurring in the majority of normal subjects, at least under these particular conditions of stimulation.