One of the most amazing feats that the nervous system performs is stabilization of the perceived visual world when the retinal display is continually shifting because of eye, head and body movements. If our neural representation of the world did not remain steady, we would be subjected to continual nauseating displacements. We do not understand how the nervous system transforms and coordinates all the incoming signals about body position in order to perform this feat. Dr. Berkley has discovered a fascinating phenomenon that offers a new paradigm for understanding this question which he will explore with this small grant for exploratory research. Unexpectedly, in the midst of experiments designed to answer another problem, he discovered that paralyzing the muscles that move one eye causes paralysis in the muscles that move the other eye, even though anesthetic used for the immobilization was confined to one eye. He will investigate how feedback from the muscles of the paralyzed eye is used to control the actions of the intact eye. The information obtained in this investigation will be helpful to physicians treating eye movement disorders as well as to the designers of robot systems for visually guided reaching.***//
