A model for oblique saccade generation and adaptation

In 1975, D.A. Robinson developed a model to illustrate the generation of saccadic eye movements. This model has been a potential working hypothesis for the study of saccades. It explains that a saccadic control system is essentially a position-servo system with a high-gain forward path. The characteristics include the following two points: 1) A neural integrator, which eliminates steady-state positional error in the servo system, is involved in the concept of a “final common path”. The path compensates for the dynamics of the oculomotor system. 2) Pause neurons suppress the instability of the high-gain servo system by placing a deadband element in a high-gain forward path. In spite of logical completeness, the desirable position signals or feedback positional error signals cannot be found in the actual brain stem circuitry, as was expected from the model.