Visual Consequences
Since Listing's law and its variants determine the orientation of the eye(s) for any particular gaze direction, it therefore determines the spatial pattern of visual stimulation on the retina(s). For example, since Listing's law defines torsion as zero about a head-fixed axis, this results in 'false torsional' tilts about the line of sight when the eye is at tertiary (oblique) positions, which the brain must compensate for when interpreting the visual image. Torsion is not good for binocular vision because it complicates the already difficult problem of matching images from the two eyes for stereopsis (depth vision). The binocular version of Listing's law is thought to be a best compromise to simplify this problem, although it does not completely rid the visual system of the need to know current eye orientation.
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