A gaze palsy is the paresis of conjugate eye movements.

Note that patients with gaze palsy still have conjugate eye movements and therefore do not complain of diplopia.

Conjugate eye movement refers to motor coordination of the eyes that allows for bilateral fixation on a single object.

Common physiologic examples of synkineses occur during sucking, chewing, or conjugate eye movements.

The same neural integrators also generate eye position for other conjugate eye movements such as saccades and smooth pursuit.

Indeed, electrical stimulation of the abducens nucleus has been shown to generate conjugate eye movements (i.e. both eyes rotate in the same direction, and by the same angle).

The frontal eye field is a posterior part of the middle frontal gyrus and is involved in the control of saccadic, contralateral and conjugate eye movement.

Moreover, lesions to the axonal tract of interneurons (in the medial longitudinal fasciculus) have been shown to disrupt conjugate eye movements through the paralysis of the contralateral eye.

Finally, experiments where the electrical activity of single neurons in the abducens nucleus has been recorded during slow and fast conjugate eye movements have demonstrated very little differences in the discharge patterns of motoneurons and interneurons.

The disorder is caused by injury or dysfunction in the medial longitudinal fasciculus (MLF), a heavily-myelinated tract that allows conjugate eye movement by connecting the paramedian pontine reticular formation (PPRF)-abducens nucleus complex of the contralateral side to the oculomotor nucleus of the ipsilateral side.