@article{ref1,
title="Spontaneous eye blinks are entrained by finger tapping",
journal="Human movement science",
year="2010",
author="Cong, D-K and Sharikadze, M. and Staude, G. and Deubel, H. and Wolf, W.",
volume="29",
number="1",
pages="1-18",
abstract="We studied the mutual cross-talk between spontaneous eye blinks and continuous, self-paced unimanual and bimanual tapping. Both types of motor activities were analyzed with regard to their time-structure in synchronization-continuation tapping tasks which involved different task instructions, namely &quot;standard&quot; finger tapping (Experiment 1), &quot;strong&quot; tapping (Experiment 2) requiring more forceful finger movements, and &quot;impulse-like&quot; tapping (Experiment 3) where upward-downward finger movements had to be very fast. In a further control condition (Experiment 4), tapping was omitted altogether. The results revealed a prominent entrainment of spontaneous blink behavior by the manual tapping, with bimanual tapping being more effective than unimanual tapping, and with the &quot;strong&quot; and &quot;impulse-like&quot; tapping showing the largest effects on blink timing. Conversely, we found no significant effects of the tapping on the timing of the eye blinks across all experiments. The findings suggest a functional overlap of the motor control structures responsible for voluntary, rhythmic finger movements and eye blinking behavior.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0167-9457",
doi="10.1016/j.humov.2009.08.003",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.humov.2009.08.003"
}