specifically activating the medial rectus muscles of the eye through the oculomotor nerve similar pathways exist for the vertical and torsional components of the vor as depicted in fig1 a rotation in one direction inhibits one direct neural path and excites the other and conversely rotation in the other direction results in the opposite neural path excitation and inhibition in addition to these direct pathways which drive the velocity of eye rotation there is an indirect pathway that builds up the position signal needed to prevent the eye from rolling back to center when the head stops moving this pathway is particularly important when the head is moving slowly because here position signals dominate over velocity signals this is accomplished in the brain by mathematically filtering the velocity signal and then sending the resulting position signal back to vestibular nuclei this feedback loop acts as a u201c neural integrator u201d for horizontal eye position by interconnecting vestibular nuclei with the nucleus prepositus hypoglossi in the medulla similar integration for vertical and torsional eye positions involves instead the interstitial nucleus of cajal in the midbrain the networks of neural integrators are shared by all reflexes generating eye movements for example also generating eye position for any movements such as saccades and smooth pursuit the classification identification of vor responses can be translated into a multivariate optimization problem within the prior art a classification step always precedes any analysis of nystagmus responses these prior art methods rely on a priori assumptions e g forcing the slow phase eye velocity segments to belong to an envelope resembling the trajectory profile of head velocity or segregation according to a priori.