New connection between the eyes and touch discovered

Date:
July 6, 2020
Source:
New York University
Summary:
Tiny eye movements can be used as an index of humans' ability to
anticipate relevant information in the environment independent of
the information's sensory modality.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
Tiny eye movements can be used as an index of humans' ability to
anticipate relevant information in the environment independent of the information's sensory modality, a team of scientists has found. The work reveals a connection between eye movements and the sense of touch.


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"The fact that tiny eye movements can hinder our ability to discriminate tactile stimuli, and that the suppression of those eye movements before
an anticipated tactile stimulus can enhance that same ability, may reflect
that common brain areas, as well as common neural and cognitive resources, underlie both eye movements and the processing of tactile stimuli,"
explains Marisa Carrasco, a professor of psychology and neural science
at New York University and the senior author of the paper, which appears
in the latest issue of the journal Nature Communications.

"This connection between the eyes and touch reveals a surprising link
across perception, cognition, and action," adds Stephanie Badde, an NYU post-doctoral researcher and first author of the paper.

The study asked human participants to distinguish between two kinds of vibrations ("fast" -- high frequency vs. "slow" -- low frequency) that
were produced by a device connected to their finger. The researchers
then tracked even the tiniest of their involuntary eye movements, known
as micro-saccades.

These small, rapid eye-movements are known to occur even when we try
to fixate our gaze on one spot. Here, participants were instructed to
focus their vision on a fixation spot on a computer screen. A cue --
a tap elicited by the device at their finger -- would announce the next imminent vibration. What the participants did not know is that the time interval between that cue and the tactile vibration was a central part
of the experimental design.

The manipulation of that interval allowed participants in some
blocks to predict with more accuracy precisely when the vibration
would happen. Notably, when they had that precise information, the
researchers could see not only how the participants' microsaccade rates
would decrease just before the vibration stimulus, but also how their
ability to distinguish between fast and slow vibrations was enhanced by
the suppression of micro-saccades.


========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by New_York_University. Note: Content
may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Stephanie Badde, Caroline F. Myers, Shlomit Yuval-Greenberg, Marisa
Carrasco. Oculomotor freezing reflects tactile temporal expectation
and aids tactile perception. Nature Communications, 2020; 11 (1)
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-17160-1 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200706140909.htm

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