Schizophrenic vulnerability: a deficiency of the correlation between foveal perception and oculomotor proprioception?

In a previous paper published in Medical Hypotheses, the author proved by a simple mirror test a dissociation between the goals of selective attention and bifoveal fixation in a schizophrenic patient. In the present article, she enters into the details of the patient's results in ophthalmological te sts which revealed an opposite deviation of accommodation and vergence, com pensated in a way incompatible with Hering's law. She expounds that Hering' s law is based on the correlation of retinal data with proprioceptive infor mation of the exterior eye-muscles, and that schizophrenic vulnerability mi ght consist of a disturbance of this correlation favouring fusion of patter ns in the remote and external space over fusion in the near and central spa ce. Some phenomena found in schizophrenic patients and their carrier parent s are explained in the light of this hypothesis. Finally, the author gives detailed advice on how to overcome difficulties in the correction of the op hthalmological deviations that induce the vulnerability to take effect. (C) 2000 Harcourt Publishers Ltd.