TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2010//
TI  - Spontaneous eye blinks are entrained by finger tapping
JO  - Human movement science
A1  - Cong, D-K
A1  - Sharikadze, M.
A1  - Staude, G.
A1  - Deubel, H.
A1  - Wolf, W.
SP  - 1
EP  - 18
VL  - 29
IS  - 1
N2  - 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 "standard" finger tapping (Experiment 1), "strong" tapping (Experiment 2) requiring more forceful finger movements, and "impulse-like" 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 "strong" and "impulse-like" 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>
LA  - en
SN  - 0167-9457
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.humov.2009.08.003
ID  - ref1
ER  -