A new motor synergy that serves the needs of oculomotor and eye lid systems while keeping the downtime of vision minimal

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Cite this article as: eLife 2016;5:e16290 doi: 10.7554/eLife.16290

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Abstract

The purpose of blinks is to keep the eyes hydrated and to protect them. Blinks are rarely noticed by the subject as blink-induced alterations of visual input are blanked out without jeopardizing the perception of visual continuity, features blinks share with saccades. Although not perceived, the blink-induced disconnection from the visual environment leads to a loss of information. Therefore there is critical need to minimize it. Here we demonstrate evidence for a new type of eye movement serving a distinct oculomotor demand, namely the resetting of eye torsion, likewise inevitably causing a loss of visual information. By integrating this eye movement into blinks, the inevitable down times of vision associated with each of the two behaviors are synchronized and the overall downtime minimized.

Article and author information

Author details

Mohammad Farhan Khazali

Department of Cognitive Neurology, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany

For correspondence
mohammad.khazali@student.uni-tuebingen.de

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Joern K Pomper

Department of Cognitive Neurology, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Aleksandra Smilgin

Department of Cognitive Neurology, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Friedemann Bunjes

Department of Cognitive Neurology, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Peter Thier

Department of Cognitive Neurology, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany

For correspondence
thier@uni-tuebingen.de

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

Funding

No external funding was received for this work.

Ethics

Human subjects: All subjects gave written informed consent and consent to publication according to the declaration of Helsinki prior to the experiment. The study was approved by the ethics committee of the University of Tuebingen.

Reviewing Editor

Jennifer L Raymond, Stanford University, United States

Publication history

Received: March 22, 2016
Accepted: August 5, 2016
Accepted Manuscript published: August 23, 2016 (version 1)
Accepted Manuscript updated: August 25, 2016 (version 2)
Version of Record published: September 6, 2016 (version 3)

Copyright

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.