LONG-TERM NONCONJUGATE ADAPTATION OF HUMAN SACCADES TO ANISOMETROPIC SPECTACLES

It is generally believed that saccades follow Hering's law in the sense that they are equally large in the two eyes. We demonstrated that saccades are different in size in the two eyes in 8 habitual wearers of anisometropic spectacles, which have lenses of different refractive powers, and therefore supply each eye with a differently sized visual image. The eye provided with the larger visual image made larger saccades than its fellow eye. This nonconjugate adaptation was almost complete for both horizontal and vertical saccades. Post-saccadic drift was also asymmetrically adapted: it reduced any fixation-disparity present at saccadic offset. The nonconjugate was also expressed in smooth-pursuit eye movements. In addition, these nonconjugate adaptations were present during monocular viewing, which shows that they were hard-programmed.