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Microsaccades Are Coupled to Heartbeat
- 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.
Author details: | Sven Ohl, Christian Wohltat, Reinhold KlieglORCiDGND, Olga PollatosGND, Ralf EngbertORCiDGND |
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DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2211-15.2016 |
ISSN: | 0270-6474 |
Pubmed ID: | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26818511 |
Title of parent work (English): | The journal of neuroscience |
Publisher: | Society for Neuroscience |
Place of publishing: | Washington |
Publication type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Year of first publication: | 2016 |
Publication year: | 2016 |
Release date: | 2020/03/22 |
Tag: | eye movements; heartbeat; microsaccades |
Volume: | 36 |
Number of pages: | 5 |
First page: | 1237 |
Last Page: | 1241 |
Funding institution: | Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft Research Unit [868, EN 471/3-2, PO 1011/1-1] |
Peer review: | Referiert |
Institution name at the time of the publication: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Exzellenzbereich Kognitionswissenschaften |