Optokinetic response

[1] The purpose of OKR is to prevent motion blur on the retina that would otherwise occur when an animal moves its head or navigates through its environment.

The drum most commonly contains sinusoidal or square-wave stripes that move across the subject's field of view to elicit strong optokinetic eye movements.

Outside of laboratory settings, OKR is strongly evoked by natural image motion, including when looking out the side window of a moving vehicle.

When viewing constant, unidirectional motion, OKR consists of a stereotyped "sawtooth" waveform that represents two types of eye movements.

[5][6][7] Both vertical and horizontal asymmetries are often attributed to functional adaptations that reflect common natural scene statistics associated with forward terrestrial locomotion.

Recurrent inhibitory connections exist between these AOS nuclei, further suggesting a subtraction of signals between different oDSGC types.

The projection neurons of the NOT, LTN, and MTN converge on the oculomotor plant in the brainstem, where their activity is integrated to drive the eye movements.

[15][16][17] Changes to the stereotypical OKR waveform can also be a biomarker of disease, including stroke, concussion, drug or alcohol intoxication, and parkinsonism.

In neurobiology, the isolation of the AOS from other visual pathways, its clear connection to a behavioral readout in the form of OKR, and its conservation across species make it an attractive model system to study.