Plasticity of convergence-dependent variations of cyclovergence with vertical gaze.

Binocular alignment of foveal images is facilitated by cross-couplings of vergence eye movements with distance and direction of gaze. These couplings reduce horizontal, vertical and cyclodisparities at the fovea without using feedback from retinal image disparity. Horizontal vergence is coupled with accommodation. Vertical vergence that aligns tertiary targets in asymmetric convergence is thought to be coupled with convergence and horizontal gaze. Cyclovergence aligns the horizontal retinal meridians during gaze elevation in symmetrical convergence and is coupled with convergence and vertical gaze. The latter vergence-dependent changes of cyclovergence have been described in terms of the orientation of Listing's plane and have been referred to as the binocular extension of Listing's law. Can these couplings be modified? Plasticity has been demonstrated previously for two of the three dimensions of vergence (horizontal and vertical). The current study demonstrates that convergence-dependent changes of the orientation of Listing's plane can be adapted to either exaggerate or to reduce the cyclovergence that normally facilitates alignment of the horizontal meridians of the retinas with one another during gaze elevation in symmetrical convergence. The adaptability of cyclovergence demonstrates a neural mechanism that, in conjunction with the passive forces determined by biomechanical properties of the orbit, could play an active role in implementing Listing's extended law and provide a means for calibrating binocular eye alignment in three dimensions.

Adaptation of torsional eye alignment in relation to smooth pursuit and saccades.

The long-term fusion of vertical or horizontal disparities by vergence eye movements is known to evoke persistent changes in vertical and horizontal eye alignment. Adaptive changes in response to torsional disparities have not been well studied. Torsional eye position was measured binocularly with a video system before and after 90 min training periods in which subjects attempted to fuse cyclodisparities. Subjects trained with either a single cyclodisparity presented at a single vertical eye position or with cyclodisparities that varied smoothly from an incyclodisparity to an excyclodisparity as a function of either vertical or horizontal eye position. All five subjects showed persistent changes in binocular torsional eye alignment following both types of training. Incyclodisparities were more easily fused during training and the training aftereffect was greater in that direction. The training aftereffect was observed in relation to both saccades and smooth pursuit under both open-loop and closed-loop viewing conditions. During saccades, the dynamics of the cyclovergence training aftereffect more closely resembled the dynamics of cyclofusional movements than the dynamics of the saccades with which they were associated.

Adaptation of torsional eye alignment in relation to head roll.

The coordination of head tilt, ocular counter-roll and vertical vergence is maintained by adaptive mechanisms; the desired outcome being clear single vision. A disruption or imbalance in otolith-ocular pathways may result in diplopia which stimulates these adaptive processes. In the present experiment, dove prisms were used to create cyclodisparities that varied with head tilt about a naso-occipital axis (roll). A stimulus for incyclovergence was presented with the head rolled 45 degrees to one side and a stimulus for an excyclovergence was presented with the head rolled 45 degrees to the other side. At the end of 1 h of training, all subjects demonstrated a change in open-loop cyclovergence that would help to correct for the cyclodisparities experienced during the closed-loop training period. The change appeared to be a simple gain change in the ocular counter-roll of one or both eyes.

Head-position-dependent adaptation of nonconcomitant vertical skew.

Vertical phoria can be trained to vary with either head position or orbital eye position. The present experiments show that subjects can simultaneously adapt their eye-position-specific (nonconcomitant) vertical phorias in different directions at different head positions. Eye-position-dependent and head-position-dependent adaptive pathways, therefore, are not independent. Rather, the adaptation of vertical skew takes into account both eye and head position. In additional experiments, the magnitude of the nonconcomitant adaptive response was shown to be related to otolith output, increasing with head tilt ipsilateral to the tilt position at which training was received and decreasing in the contralateral direction.

Adaptation of vertical eye alignment in relation to head tilt.

Binocular visual feedback is used to continually calibrate binocular eye alignment so that the retinal images of the two eyes remain in correspondence. Past experiments have shown that vertical eye alignment (measured as vertical phoria) can be altered by training to disparities that vary as a function of orbital eye position. The present experiments demonstrate that vertical eye alignment can also be trained to differ with head position when eye position (with respect to the orbit) is held constant. Changes in head position were about either an earth-vertical or earth-horizontal axis to distinguish otolith-ocular related adaptation from cervical-ocular related adaptation. Changes in head position were implemented by either by rotating the whole body (WB) or by rotating the head with the body stationary (HO). Following training, adaptation of eye alignment was observed in all cases of rotation about an earth-horizontal axis and for HO pitch rotations about an earth-vertical axis. The results illustrate the ability of the oculomotor system to compensate for imbalances in otolith-ocular pathways.

A cross-coupling model of vertical vergence adaptation.

Vertical disparity vergence aligns the two eyes in response to vertical misalignment (disparity) of the two ocular images. An adaptive response to vertical disparity vergence is demonstrated by the continuation of vertical vergence when one eye is occluded. The adaptive response is quantified by vertical phoria, the eye alignment error during monocular viewing. Vertical phoria can be differentially adapted to vertical disparities of opposite sign located at two positions along the horizontal or vertical head-referenced axes. Vertical phoria aftereffects vary in amplitude as the eyes move from one adapted direction of gaze to another along the adaptation axis. A cross-coupling model was developed to account for the spatial variations of vertical phoria aftereffects. The model is constrained according to both single cell recordings of eye position sensitive neurons, and eye position measurements during and following adaptation. The vertical phoria is computed by scaling the activities of eye position sensitive neurons and converting the scaled activities into a vertical vergence signal. The three components of the model are: neural activities associated with conjugate eye position, cross-coupling weights to scale the activities, and vertical vergence transducers to convert the weighted activities to vertical vergence. The model provides a biologically plausible mechanism for vertical vergence adaptation.

Eye position signals in the abducens and oculomotor nuclei of monkeys during ocular convergence.

Many neurons in oculomotor pathways encode signals related to eye position. For example, motoneurons in the third, fourth, and sixth cranial nuclei discharge at highly regular rates during fixation intervals. During fixations of far targets, their tonic discharge is linearly related to conjugate eye position. Previous studies provided evidence that premotor cells in brainstem pathways also encoded conjugate eye position. McConville et al. (this volume), however, measured eye movements during binocular fixations when the eyes were converged and concluded that the position signal encoded by premotor position-vestibular-pause (PVP) cells in the vestibular nuclei is related to monocular (right or left) eye position rather than to conjugate eye position. This surprising relationship would not have been noticed in earlier studies that measured the movements of only one eye (using a single eye coil) or that measured only the conjugate movements of the two eyes (using bitemporal EOG electrodes). How general a feature of oculomotor signal processing is this finding? In this paper, we re-examine the eye position signal in abducens and oculomotor neurons when the movements of the two eyes are conjugate and when they are disjunctive and therefore disassociated. The data suggest that abducens neurons (AMNs and AINs) and oculomotor neurons (putative medial rectus motoneurons), unlike PVP cells, are not monocular but encode mixtures of right and left eye position signals.

Isovergence surfaces: the conjugacy of vertical eye movements in tertiary positions of gaze.

Conjugate gaze is often defined as the equal angle rotation of the two eyes. For fixation at far distances, the optical axes are parallel and conjugacy is defined irrespective of the coordinate system. For nearby or finite fixation distances, the evaluation of conjugacy for many gaze postures depends on the coordinate system used to measure it. For example, if the eye is elevated or depressed and the eye is rotated about a vertical axis, the intersections of lines of sight with a tangent screen will describe either straight lines or arcs depending on whether the vertical axis is fixed with respect to the head or to the eye. Because of the horizontal separation of the two eyes, the binocular fixation of near targets at tertiary positions of gaze will require a vertical vergence component for head-referenced but not eye-referenced measurements. The vertical gaze alignment of three human subjects was measured as they viewed targets placed at secondary and tertiary eye positions at two different distances. Vertical vergence was either held open or closed-loop. The lines of sight were found to intersect (i.e. vertical gaze was aligned) regardless of target position or viewing condition.

Mechanisms of vertical phoria adaptation revealed by time-course and two-dimensional spatiotopic maps.

The spatial spread of short term phoria adaptation was measured in response to either a single vertical disparity presented at a single eye position, or, vertical disparities of opposite sign presented at two different locations along either the primary vertical or horizontal meridians or along an oblique axis. The spread of adaptation to eye positions not specifically adapted was assessed by measuring phoria across a two-dimensional surface. The change in phoria was uniform across the field in response to a single disparity. With two disparities, adaptation conformed to the stimulus demand in the direction in which the disparity varied but was uniform in the orthogonal direction. The time-course of the adaptation indicated the presence of two mechanisms, a global one which shifted the phoria uniformly across the field and a local one which selectively adjusted the phoria to the position dependent demands of the disparity stimulus.

Dynamics and efficacy of saccade-facilitated vergence eye movements in monkeys.

1. Four macaque monkeys were trained to fixate visual targets. Eye movements were recorded binocularly using the search coil technique. Saccades, vergence movements, and combinations of the two were elicited by training the monkeys to alternate the gaze between real visual targets that differed in viewing distance and eccentricity with respect to the monkeys' heads. 2. When they shifted the gaze between targets that were at different viewing distances, the monkeys made vergence eye movements. For targets placed along the midsagittal plane, the monkeys often made binocularly symmetric vergence movements. The peak speed of symmetric divergence movements increased linearly with vergence amplitude by 5.7 deg/s per degree of vergence. The peak speed of symmetric convergence movements increased linearly with vergence amplitude by 7.9 deg/s per degree of vergence. 3. For gaze shifts between targets placed eccentrically with respect to the midsagittal plane and at different viewing distances, the monkeys made saccades in combination with vergence eye movements. When a saccade occurred during a vergence movement, peak vergence eye speed increased abruptly and reached a peak that was proportional to the speed of the saccade. For four monkeys, peak divergence speed ranged from 242 to 315 deg/s and peak convergence speed ranged from 257 to 340 deg/s for 16-deg vergence and 20-deg saccadic eye movements. 4. For gaze shifts between far targets at the same viewing distance but different eccentricities, saccadic eye movements were transiently disjunctive even though there was no vergence requirement. Initially, the eyes diverged and then converged to restore fixation to the correct depth plane. Divergence was followed by convergence regardless of the direction of the saccade. 5. The presence of transient saccade-related disjunctive eye movements suggested that the abrupt increase in peak vergence speed during combined saccadic and vergence eye movements was produced by the linear addition of a vergence eye movement and the saccade-related transients. Consistent with this hypothesis, the rate of change in peak vergence speed during various-sized saccades between far targets (no vergence required) was similar to the rate of change in peak vergence speed during combined saccadic and vergence movements. However, the peak vergence speeds during the combined movements were higher than predicted by the linear addition hypothesis, suggesting the presence of an additional mechanism. 6. The saccade-related increase in peak vergence speed during combined saccades and vergences led to a significant decrease in the amount of time required to complete vergence movements.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)

Adolescent mothers, stress, and prevention.

Adolescent mothers face problems that can lead to psychological stress. Based on prospective data from the present study, these problems point toward the need for a coping skills prevention approach to help adolescent mothers manage stress. This paper reports data from outcome research on such an approach with adolescent mothers. Subjects were 79 adolescent mothers who were tested before, immediately after, and three months following the provision of coping skills intervention in an experimental condition. Subjects in a test-only control condition received no special intervention. At posttest, experimental condition subjects showed more positive outcomes on measures of social support, cognitive performance, conflict management, and interpersonal competence. At three-month follow-up, experimental condition subjects had more positive outcomes on social support, cognitive performance, parenting ability, child care self-efficacy, and measures of psychological well-being.

Electrode displacement from a multipurpose Swan-Ganz catheter.

A patient is described in whom a multipurpose pulmonary artery catheter had been placed. Upon removal of the catheter, it was noted that the electrodes had become detached from the lead. A new method is described for insertion and removal of the catheter which will prevent this complication.

Psychological correlates of teenage motherhood.

PIP: The social and economic consequences of adolescent motherhood are known, yet the psychological associates are largely unstudied. Clinical studies point to distressing reactions to adolescent pregnancy, and do not reflect changes in social attitudes about teenage parenting. In the study, adolescent mothers (n=62), pregnant teenagers (n=63), and non-pregnant and nonparenting (n=60) adolescents enrolled in public high schools completed measures of socioeconomic status, depression, anxiety, loneliness, selfesteem, and social supports. Study participants were enrolled in 3 schoolaged parent programs in urban, suburban and semirural schools. Students' ages ranged from 11 to 21 years. By race, 49% of the young women were Black, 36.8% were White, 5.6% were Native American, 7% were Asian, 4% were Hispanic, and 5% declined to identify their ethnicity. Pregnant, parenting and comparison participants were recruited in the classes of the young women. Findings suggest that adolescent mothers and pregnant teenagers are less distressed by their situation than was once thought. Social supports and socioeconomic status predicted psychological well-being better thanparenting status. Expanded schools programs for teenage mothers and renewed efforts to enhance young mothers' social and socioeconomic resources are recommended.^ieng