(Press-News.org) We make our eye movements earlier or later in order to coordinate with movements of our arms, New York University neuroscientists have found. Their study, which appears in the journal Neuron, points to a mechanism in the brain that allows for this coordination and may have implications for rehabilitation and prosthetics.
Researchers have sought to understand the neurological processes behind eye and arm movements. For example, when you reach for an object, what goes on in our brains so that our eyes and arms are in sync? Such coordination is central to the way different systems of the brain communicate with each other, and these undertakings are surprisingly complicated—due to differences in weight, for instance, the arm takes longer than the eye to move.
The question is vital to rehabilitation—a better understanding of these neurological processes may help address the needs of those who have suffered brain injuries and struggle to coordinate movements among different parts of the body. In addition, new insights in this area could lead to more advanced neural prosthetics, which are artificial extensions to the body that restore or supplement function of the nervous system lost during disease or injury. Currently, these devices are somewhat primitive given our relatively limited knowledge of how the brain works to coordinate movement.
In their study, the NYU researchers examined the neurological activity of macaque monkeys while the subjects performed a variety of tasks that required them to either reach and to simultaneously employ rapid eye movements or to only use rapid eye movements, also known as saccades.
The resulting readings revealed significant coherent patterns of firing of neurons in the brain's posterior parietal cortex (PPC) when both the eyes and arms were required to move for the same task, but not for tasks that involved only saccades. The patterns of firing were found in regions of the PPC that are specialized for moving either the eye or the arm.
Coherent patterns of firing may be due to these different brain areas communicating when coordinating movement, the research team concluded.
"We think we have a mechanism for coordination," explained Bijan Pesaran, a professor in NYU's Center for Neuroscience and the study's senior author, adding that the finding is only a step and additional study is likely to reveal a more complex process. "Our findings show it is the patterns of activity in a specific region of the brain just prior to both saccades and reaching that are important."
In addition, their data showed a coordination of movement between the eyes and arms.
"The brain adjusts timing of eye movements, depending on how long it takes to start moving the arm," Pesaran explained. "Our study is asking how information flows between the arm and eye movement systems, and it shows how coherent patterns of neural activity are important to this communication."
###
The study's other co-authors were Heather Dean and Maureen Hagan, postdoctoral fellows in NYU's Center for Neural Science.
The research was supported by grants from: the National Science Foundation; the National Institutes of Health; NYSTAR; the Sloan Fondation; the McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience; and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund.
END
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Nearly one in three women who have breast cancer surgery will need to return to the operating room for additional surgery after the tumor is evaluated by a pathologist.
A new service at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center cuts that number drastically by having pathologists on-site in the operating suite to assess tumors and lymph nodes immediately after they are removed. Meanwhile, the surgeon and patient remain in the operating room until the results are back, and any additional operating can be done immediately.
This cut the number ...
According to a 2003 study by German and American scientists, a component of the Lily of the Valley scent known as Bourgeonal alters the calcium balance of human sperm and attracts the sperm. The "Lily of the Valley phenomenon" – also the title of a book about smelling – was born as a result of this discovery that sperm act as swimming olfactory cells which follow a "scent trail" laid by the egg. However, a detailed explanation for the Lily of the Valley phenomenon remained illusive as neither Bourgeonal nor other scents could be identified in the female sex organ. Scientists ...
Fanz Media Group Inc. announced today the launch of fanz.com a social network specifically focused on sports enthusiasts. Web and social media experts, and the gurus of sports media have come together to create the ultimate network of sports fans. Fanz.com is an open forum specifically for any and every sport. Any sport you can think of, fanz.com instantly connects you with the multimedia and social streams and allows instant interaction with other sports fans from around the globe.
Fanz.com is a sports network that provides one click content feeds and real time interaction ...
Parents may be misinformed during prenatal scans on whether their twins are identical or non-identical, say UCL researchers in a new commentary piece published today (29 February) in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.
Determining if same-sex twins are identical or non-identical (from one egg or two; monozygotic or dizygotic) is not always straight forward, say the researchers. They looked at data from the Gemini study, a birth cohort of 2402 families with twins born in England and Wales in 2007.
Parents of same sex twins (1586) were asked ...
The bacterium Mycoplasma pneumoniae, which causes atypical pneumonia, is helping scientists uncover how cells make the most of limited resources. By measuring all the proteins this bacterium produces, scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, and collaborators, have found that the secret is fine-tuning.
Like a mechanic can fine-tune a car after it has left the factory, cells have ways to tweak proteins, changing their chemical properties after production – so-called post-translational modifications. Anne-Claude Gavin, Peer ...
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Often faced with overwhelming anxiety, patients newly diagnosed with lung cancer can find themselves in distress, and new research recommends nurses play a key role in alleviating concerns, leading to a better quality of life for patients.
A diagnosis of lung cancer – the leading cause of cancer death in the United States – brings with it high levels of stress and raises existential issues and death-related thoughts and concerns in patients, said Rebecca H. Lehto, assistant professor in the College of Nursing at Michigan State University.
In a ...
DURHAM, N.C. -- Rising sea levels are likely to change Southern California beaches in the coming century, but not in ways you might expect.
While some beaches may shrink or possibly disappear, others are poised to remain relatively large -- leaving an uneven distribution of economic gains and losses for coastal beach towns, according to a study by researchers at Duke University and five other institutions.
"Some beaches actually stand to benefit economically from sea level rise, creating winners and losers among California beach towns," said Linwood Pendleton, director ...
Trying to make a big decision while you're also preparing for a scary presentation? You might want to hold off on that. Feeling stressed changes how people weigh risk and reward. A new article published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, reviews how, under stress, people pay more attention to the upside of a possible outcome.
It's a bit surprising that stress makes people focus on the way things could go right, says Mara Mather of the University of Southern California, who cowrote the new review paper ...
PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Women gradually use condoms less frequently during their first year of college, according to a new study by researchers from The Miriam Hospital's Centers for Behavioral and Preventive Medicine. This was particularly true for women who binge drink, have lower grade point averages or come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.
The findings, published online in the Journal of Sex Research, offer some of the first clues to how condom use changes during the college years – a time when young people are sexually active and use condoms inconsistently.
"We ...
Obesity is considered the leading preventable cause of death worldwide — until you reach old age, that is. Though obesity increases the risk of an early death, shaving an average of six to seven years off a person's lifespan, Tel Aviv University researchers have found that this trend may reverse itself after the age of 85. In these people, excess fat seems to have a "protective" effect, decreasing the risk of death when compared to those who are considered at a normal body weight.
When we reach a very old age, some of the factors that affect mortality in younger people ...
