Summary
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1.
Goldfish were deprived of visual input and/or normally functional horizontal semicircular canals.
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2.
Their horizontal eye movements were measured from cinematographic records, and the extent to which the eyes compensated for horizontal rotations of the head was given by the “compensation factor,” CF, the ratio (rotation of the eyes relative to the head)/(rotation of the head). All data were obtained from freely-swimming fish.
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3.
The CF's for normal, canal-lesioned, blinded, and blinded/canal-lesioned animals were: −0.95±0.10, −0.80±0.10, −0.50±0.04, and −0.41±0.06 (means ±2 S.E.M.), respectively.
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4.
These figures lead to the conclusion that the visual input contributes −0.39 to −0.45 to the CF, while the canal input contributes only −0.09 to −0.17. Thus, the visual input is the major factor; the canals are quantitatively much less important. There is in addition a third source (or sources) contributing to the CF, since the blinded/canal-lesioned fish compensated partially.
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5.
Experiments of partially restrained animals showed that this third source is not a preprogrammed instruction, nor is it dependent on sensory feedback from the rest of the labyrinth, tactile receptors, lateral line current detectors, or proprioceptors in the trunk. Its identity remains a mystery.
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This work was supported by grant EY-00168 from the National Eye Institute of the United States Public Health Service.
We thank Drs. M. Alpern, R. Knighton, and E. Pugh for useful critical discussions, C. Gans for the extended loan of the motion picture analyzer, Mr. L. Martonyi for photographic services, Ms. J. Smith for typing, and the staff of the Statistical Research Laboratory for the use of the MIDAS Program.
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Easter, S.S., Johns, P.R. Horizontal compensatory eye movements in goldfish (Carassius auratus). J. Comp. Physiol. 92, 37–57 (1974). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00696525
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00696525