Stephen Lisberger studies the brain mechanisms that generate accurate eye movements in response to our own motion or the motion of objects in the world.
Excellent vision depends on keeping the eyes still with respect to the object of regard.
One threat to visual stability is created by our own head turns, which could drag our eyes along and cause images to smear across the retina. A second threat to visual stability arises because of the propensity of things to move. Smooth pursuit eye movements respond to the visual stimuli that are created when objects move. By accelerating the eyes so that they rotate at approximately the direction and speed of object motion, pursuit ultimately keeps the images from moving objects relatively stable on the retina. Our laboratory studies how these two kinds of eye movement are generated by the intact brain in behaving primates.