Ocular Influence on Upper Limb Voluntary Movement

Abstract

Most people in the world experience the world through their eyes and hands. As a species, we perform many tasks with our upper limbs while maintaining posture. However, very little is known about the visual system’s role during upper limb voluntary movement after perturbations that require upper limb motor corrections and whole-body postural adjustments. Our study was designed to find the relationship between eye movements, center of pressure (COP), and muscle activation of the lower and upper limbs when a mechanical disturbance deviates a goal-directed reaching task. We hypothesized that neural copies of oculomotor signals, which track objectmotion and are mediated by frontoparietal networks, serve as input to gate feedforward and feedback motor responses. With more testing we hope to better understand the relationship between hand and eye movements during upright stance. Our study could have implications for motor development and clinical rehabilitation in Parkinson's disease patients.

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