Abstract
Presentation Description :
Binocular alignment and binocular coordination of eye movements are important in foveate species. Developmental loss of sensory or motor fusion leads to ocular misalignment (strabismus) in as much as 5% of all children making this disease a significant public health issue. Although developmental strabismus is often associated with under- or over-action of specific extraocular muscles, it must be that there is also disruption of innervation to these extraocular muscles from the brain. Thus the overall goal of research in our laboratory is to investigate neural oculomotor mechanisms underlying disruption in binocular alignment and binocular coordination of eye movements in strabismus. Our strategy is to utilize a basic science approach with behavioral studies of eye alignment and eye movements, and neurophysiological studies of oculomotor circuits in awake-behaving strabismic monkeys. In this presentation, I will present evidence suggesting that a circuit that serves slow vergence eye movements in the normal animal, including the supraoculomotor area, fastigial and posterior interposed nuclei of the cerebellum, the superior colliculus and the motor nuclei, is involved in setting the state of eye misalignment in strabismus.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2018 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Honolulu, Hawaii, April 29 - May 3, 2018.