Dataset Information

Interaction between the oculomotor and postural systems during a dual-task: Compensatory reductions in head sway following visually-induced postural perturbations promote the production of accurate double-step saccades in standing human adults.

ABSTRACT: Humans routinely scan their environment for useful information using saccadic eye movements and/or coordinated movements of the eyes and other body segments such the head and the torso. Most previous eye movement studies were conducted with seated subject and showed that single saccades and sequences of saccades (e.g. double-step saccades) made to briefly flashed stimuli were equally accurate and precise. As one can easily appreciate, most gaze shifts performed daily by a given person are not produced from a seated position, but rather from a standing position either as subjects perform an action from an upright stance or as they walk from one place to another. In the experiments presented here, we developed a new dual-task paradigm in order to study the interaction between the gaze control system and the postural system. Healthy adults (n = 12) were required to both maintain balance and produce accurate single-step and double-step eye saccades from a standing position. Visually-induced changes in head sway were evoked using wide-field background stimuli that either moved in the mediolateral direction or in the anteroposterior direction. We found that, as in the seated condition, single- and double-step saccades were very precise and accurate when made from a standing position, but that a tighter control of head sway was necessary in the more complex double-step saccades condition for equivalent results to be obtained. Our perturbation results support the "common goal" hypothesis that state that if necessary, as was the case during the more complex oculomotor task, context-dependent modulations of the postural system can be triggered to reduced instability and therefore support the accomplishment of a suprapostural goal.

SUBMITTER: Boulanger M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5351857 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Interaction between the oculomotor and postural systems during a dual-task: Compensatory reductions in head sway following visually-induced postural perturbations promote the production of accurate double-step saccades in standing human adults.

Boulanger Mathieu M Giraudet Guillaume G Faubert Jocelyn J

PloS one 20170315 3

Humans routinely scan their environment for useful information using saccadic eye movements and/or coordinated movements of the eyes and other body segments such the head and the torso. Most previous eye movement studies were conducted with seated subject and showed that single saccades and sequences of saccades (e.g. double-step saccades) made to briefly flashed stimuli were equally accurate and precise. As one can easily appreciate, most gaze shifts performed daily by a given person are not pr ...[more]

PMID: 28296958

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Project description:ObjectiveAre people with a characteristically large physiological sway rendered particularly unstable when standing on a moving surface? Is postural sway in standing individuals idiosyncratic? In this study, we examine postural sway in individuals standing normally, and when subtle continuous sinusoidal disturbances are applied to their support platform. We calculate consistency between conditions to verify if sway can be considered characteristic of each individual. We also correlate two different aspects of participants' responses to disturbance; their sway velocity and their regulation of body orientation.MethodsNineteen healthy adults (age 29.2 ± 3.2 years) stood freely on footplates coaxially aligned with their ankles and attached to a motorized platform. They had their eyes closed, and hips and knees locked with a light wooden board attached to their body. Participants either stood quietly on a fixed platform or on a slowly tilting platform (0.1 Hz sinusoid; 0.2 and 0.4 deg). Postural sway size was separated into two entities: (1) the spontaneous sway velocity component (natural random relatively rapid postural adjustments, RMS body angular velocity) and (2) the evoked tilt gain component (much slower 0.1 Hz synchronous tilt induced by the movement of the platform, measured as peak-to-peak (p-p) gain, ratio of body angle to applied footplate rotation).ResultsThere was no correlation between the velocity of an individual's sway and their evoked tilt gain (r = 0.34, p = 0.15 and r = 0.30, p = 0.22). However, when considered separately, each of the two measurements showed fair to good absolute agreement within conditions. Spontaneous sway velocity consistently increased as participants were subjected to increasing disturbance. Participants who swayed more (or less) did so across all conditions [ICC(3,k) = 0.95]. Evoked tilt gain also showed consistency between conditions [ICC(3,k) = 0.79], but decreased from least to most disturbed conditions.ConclusionThe two measurements remain consistent between conditions. Consistency between conditions of two very distinct unrelated measurements reflects the idiosyncratic nature of postural sway. However, sway velocity and tilt gain are not related, which supports the idea that the short-term regulation of stability and the longer-term regulation of orientation are controlled by different processes.

Dataset Information

Interaction between the oculomotor and postural systems during a dual-task: Compensatory reductions in head sway following visually-induced postural perturbations promote the production of accurate double-step saccades in standing human adults.

Publications

Interaction between the oculomotor and postural systems during a dual-task: Compensatory reductions in head sway following visually-induced postural perturbations promote the production of accurate double-step saccades in standing human adults.

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