Mechanics of the eye movement: geometry of the listing space

There is physiological evidence to support the thesis that all saccadic eye movements obey Listing's law, which states that eye orientations form a subset consisting of rotation matrices of which the axes are orthogonal to the normal gaze direction. Here we analyze the geometry of this restricted configuration space (referred to as the Listing space). We also compare distances eye needs to travel subject to the Listing's law with geodesic distances in the rotation group.