Adaptive Control of Eye Movements: Clinical Implications

This paper is directed primarily to clinicians who diagnose and treat patients with neurological disorders. It is an attempt to illustrate that even with modern imaging technology and other advances in laboratory testing, a thorough understanding of neurophysiology and its anatomical substrate still plays an important role in the diagnosis and management of patients with neurological diseases. One area in neurophysiology in which there has been great progress in the last few decades is the ocular motor system. Particular interest has been focused on the ways that the brain can adapt to lesions, and more specifically, how the ocular motor system keeps itself calibrated in the face of normal development and aging as well as in response to disease and trauma. Since disorders of eye movements are such common and often dramatic manifestations of neurological disease it seems appropriate to bring some of the newer concepts in ocular motor physiology to the “bedside”.