Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science, Vol 29, 1860-1865, Copyright © 1988 by Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology

ARTICLES AND REPORTS

Auditory biofeedback to control vertical and horizontal eye movements in the dark

GK Hung, KJ Ciuffreda, CA Carley, P Fang and S Menditto
College of Engineering, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08855-0909.

Although there is evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of oculomotor auditory biofeedback on the control of the horizontal component of gaze in the dark, the oculomotor behavior of the horizontal and vertical components under such conditions remained unknown. Horizontal and vertical fixational eye movements were measured monocularly using an infrared limbal eye tracker in three normal subjects under three conditions: in the light, total darkness, and total darkness with two-dimensional auditory biofeedback of the eye movement. With fixation in the light, all subjects showed small drifts and corrective movements of up to about 0.5 degrees horizontally and vertically. With fixation in total darkness, the eye movements generally exhibited drifts and saccades of well over 2 degrees. However, with auditory biofeedback added during fixation in total darkness, the drifts and corrective saccades were reduced to levels more similar to those found with fixation in the light. The percent time on target in the light, dark and dark plus auditory biofeedback conditions was about 100, 50 and 80%, respectively, for both horizontal and vertical eye position. These results demonstrate that incorporation of two-dimensional oculomotor auditory biofeedback alone is sufficient to maintain fixation accuracy of both horizontal and vertical eye movements in total darkness close to that found during normal fixation in the light.