TY  - JOUR
A1  - Ohl, Sven
A1  - Wohltat, Christian
A1  - Kliegl, Reinhold
A1  - Pollatos, Olga
A1  - Engbert, Ralf
T1  - Microsaccades Are Coupled to Heartbeat
JF  - The journal of neuroscience
N2  - During visual fixation, the eye generates microsaccades and slower components of fixational eye movements that are part of the visual processing strategy in humans. Here, we show that ongoing heartbeat is coupled to temporal rate variations in the generation of microsaccades. Using coregistration of eye recording and ECG in humans, we tested the hypothesis that microsaccade onsets are coupled to the relative phase of the R-R intervals in heartbeats. We observed significantly more microsaccades during the early phase after the R peak in the ECG. This form of coupling between heartbeat and eye movements was substantiated by the additional finding of a coupling between heart phase and motion activity in slow fixational eye movements; i.e., retinal image slip caused by physiological drift. Our findings therefore demonstrate a coupling of the oculomotor system and ongoing heartbeat, which provides further evidence for bodily influences on visuomotor functioning.
KW  - eye movements
KW  - heartbeat
KW  - microsaccades
Y1  - 2016
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2211-15.2016
SN  - 0270-6474
VL  - 36
SP  - 1237
EP  - 1241
PB  - Society for Neuroscience
CY  - Washington
ER  -