Aasef Shaikh - Advances in Translational Neuroscience of Eye Movement Disorders

Contemporary Clinical Neurosciences bridges the gap between bench research in the neurosciences and clinical neurology work by offering translational research on all aspects of the human brain and behavior with a special emphasis on the understanding, treatment, and eradication of diseases of the human nervous system. These novel, state-of-the-art research volumes present a wide array of preclinical and clinical research programs to a wide spectrum of readers representing the diversity of neuroscience as a discipline. Volumes in the series have focused on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Neurodegenerative diseases, G Protein Receptors, Sleep disorders, and Addiction issues.

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/7678

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Eye movements are the window to the brain and mind. They serve as an important diagnostic marker, surrogate to modern imaging technology. The study of ocular motor behavior can examine the physiology of the human brain. This book, Advances in Neuroscience of Eye Movements, is about basic, translational, and clinical science of eye movements and is dedicated to David A. Robinson a pioneer in the field who invented one of the reliable method for measuring eye movements and systematically studied and quantified the electrophysiological properties of eye movement-related neurons from the frontal eye fields to the superior colliculus to ocular motoneurons. Dr. Robinson was one of the first to interpret behavioral and electrophysiological properties of the ocular motor system using mathematical models. He was also a translational scientist before that term was coined, successfully bringing basic science and computational techniques to account for clinical disorders.

Eye movements have been studied for at least two centuries, before the time of David Robinson. However, the primary focus of eye movement literature has changed over time. Early literature emphasized disease phenomenology and subjective descriptions of various ocular motor abnormalities. Several decades later, scientists and engineers, such as David Robinson, were enticed by the simplicity and elegance of ocular motor physiology. Computational rigor, physiological elegance, and clinical utility of the eye movement literature attracted neurologists, otolaryngologists, and ophthalmologists. Application of ocular motor physiology in the clinical arena grew exponentially in the last two decades of the twentieth century. Many diseases of the human brain that affect eye movement were readily explained by computational and physiological concepts of ocular motor control models. The neuroscience of eye movement, depth of physiological understanding, and computational explanation for almost every aspect of these movements had a natural next step to extend these concepts and study neural control of other motor behavior and dysfunction. Simultaneously, there was an unprecedented growth of portable and user-friendly technology to precisely and cost-effectively measure the eye movements. With the development of data acquisition systems, along with the growing interest of non-motor scientists, the study of eye movements made yet another leap into human cognition and behavior applications. The interaction and common interest of engineers, physicians, biologists, and psychologists were instrumental in the multidisciplinary growth of ocular motor research. This volume, Advances in Neuroscience of Eye Movements, reflects the truly multidisciplinary nature of the ocular motor field.