Effects of Smooth Pursuit and Saccadic Eye Movements on Whole Body Postural Responses During Upright Perturbed Reaching Movements
Open Access
Author:
Albenze, Eliza
Area of Honors:
Kinesiology
Degree:
Bachelor of Science
Document Type:
Thesis
Thesis Supervisors:
Tarkeshwar Singh, Thesis Supervisor Lacy Marie Alexander, Thesis Honors Advisor
Keywords:
motor control EMG visuomotor posture stability
Abstract:
During daily activities, such as a simple reaching task, motor control and coordination of the upper and lower limbs are essential for successfully completion of the task. This coordination is done through anticipatory and feedback responses in the upper and lower limbs, which includes corrections to center of pressure to ensure balance is maintained throughout the task. Anticipatory and feedback responses occur when upper and lower limb muscles activate before any movement is initiated which helps maintain balance and posture during the task. There is already evidence that mechanical perturbations applied to the upper limb elicit rapid responses in lower limbs; however, it is unclear if different eye movements (smooth pursuits and saccades) affect upper and lower limb coordination, specifically during mechanical perturbations. The study contains two experiments: a visuomotor tracking task and a reaching task which utilize smooth pursuit and saccadic eye movement, respectively. The study aims to identify the potential differences in muscle activity, particularly the long latency period, during visuomotor tracking and reaching tasks. Reaching movements to peripheral targets requires the use of saccadic eye movements, while the visuomotor tracking task requires smooth pursuit eye movements. The findings of the study do not support any differences in the long latency period for upper or lower limbs when comparing the two experiments. The findings do show a plethora of differences in hand kinematics for the two experiments.
