Adaptive Plasticity in the Oculomotor System

The contents of this symposium bear witness to the importance of the oculomotor system in the study of neuronal plasticity. Part of this recent development is due to a surge of progress in understanding the oculomotor system itself, made possible by the ability to record from the neurons of the brainstem and cerebellar oculomotor pathways in alert animals making normal eye movements. An additional factor is the mechanical simplicity of the eyeball and its muscles that makes the relationship between neural activity in the brain stem and the resulting eye movements relatively direct. A very important factor in using the oculomotor system to study plasticity is that it may be divided into about five major subsystems the functions of which are fairly obvious. Thus, one can speak of dysmetria as a failure to achieve a certain function, and of adaptive plasticity as its restoration.

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