Cervico-ocular reflex after labyrinthine damage

In rabbits, neck proprioception can influence eye position by inducing low compensatory responses to horizontal head displacements and by maintaining the range of the reflex eye movements in a compensatory direction. in bilaterally labyrinthectomized and plugged animals it was demonstrated that cervico-ocular reflex (COR) can partially substitute for the vestibular function in gaze stability by increasing its gain at high frequencies of stimulation. A signal error coming from the head-body angle amplitude could guide this specific gain increase. However, differences between plugged and labyrinthectomized animals were observed concerning the time course of the COR gain changes and the spatial orientation of the responses. Also, it was demonstrated that cervical input can maintain the eyes in compensatory position after fast head displacements even in the absence of compensatory fast phases by triggering compensatory fast phases.