Eyelid Movements: Behavioral Studies of Blinking in Humans Under Different Stimulus Conditions

VanderWerf, Frans; Brassinga, Peter; Reits, Dik; Aramideh, M.; Visser, Bart

doi:10.1152/jn.00557.2002

Cited by 166 publications

(138 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…It is difficult to measure the blinking duration from corneal data, and we could not find any reference to validate our results. However, from eyelid motion, we measured blinking with an average duration of 0:307 AE 0:106 s, which is consistent with values found by VanderWerf et al [9] and Nakamura et al [10], who reported durations of 0.334 and 0:320 s, respectively.…”

supporting

confidence: 91%

Noninvasive measurement of eye retraction during blinking

et al. 2010

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We present a noninvasive technique for high-speed measuring of eye retraction and eyelid position during blinking. The anterior chamber of the eye is illuminated by the slit lamp of a biomicroscope and eye dynamics during a blinking sequence are captured with a high-speed camera working at 500 frames per second. Digital image processing allows quantitative analysis of cornea and eyelid positions during the closing and opening phases of the blinking process. Our method allows simultaneous measuring of corneal retraction, duration of down and up phases, total blinking duration, and average and peak speeds of the eyelids in both phases, thus providing a complete analysis of the blink's transversal motions.

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supporting

confidence: 91%

Noninvasive measurement of eye retraction during blinking

et al. 2010

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“…To test this trivial possibility, we compared the cortical activations evoked by a spontaneous eyeblink and those evoked by comparable physical blackouts (165 ms in duration) (14) that were inserted in the same video clips pseudorandomly with a mean interval of 6.4 s. The DMN exhibited greater activation after an eyeblink than after a blackout ( Fig. 3A and Table S3), clearly showing that the transient activation in the DMN was due to the eyeblink per se and not to the physical interruption of the visual input.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Blink-related momentary activation of the default mode network while viewing videos

Nakano

Katô

Morito

et al. 2012

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

199

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It remains unknown why we generate spontaneous eyeblinks every few seconds, more often than necessary for ocular lubrication. Because eyeblinks tend to occur at implicit breakpoints while viewing videos, we hypothesized that eyeblinks are actively involved in the release of attention. We show that while viewing videos, cortical activity momentarily decreases in the dorsal attention network after blink onset but increases in the default-mode network implicated in internal processing. In contrast, physical blackouts of the video do not elicit such reciprocal changes in brain networks. The results suggest that eyeblinks are actively involved in the process of attentional disengagement during a cognitive behavior by momentarily activating the default-mode network while deactivating the dorsal attention network.functional MRI | natural vision W e spontaneously generate an eyeblink every few seconds-15-20 per minute, on average. These spontaneous eyeblinks are believed to occur to lubricate the cornea, but the rate is several times more than required for ocular lubrication (1, 2). Therefore, it remains an open question why eyeblinks are generated so frequently at the cost of blocking visual input for a period amounting to 10% of our waking hours (3).Spontaneous eyeblinks tend to occur at breakpoints of attention, such as the end of a sentence while reading (4), a pause by the speaker while listening to a speech (5), and implicit breakpoints while viewing videos (3). That eyeblinks occur not only at explicit but also at implicit breakpoints raises the possibility that spontaneous eyeblinks play an active role in the release of attention from external stimuli while attentively engaging in a cognitive task. Clinical neurological studies support this possibility. People who had a difficulty of voluntary eye movements often generate eyeblinks to terminate the spasms of visual fixations (6-8).Assuming the role of the eyeblink in disengaging attention, each spontaneous eyeblink should be associated with inhibition of the dorsal attentional network that mediates the allocation of attention (9), and with an activation of the default-mode network (DMN), which is known to counteract the dorsal attention network (10) and is implicated in introspection (11, 12). We hypothesized that spontaneous eyeblinks control the disengagement of attention by momentarily deactivating the dorsal attention network while activating the DMN.To test this hypothesis, we used fMRI to examine the cortical activity of 10 healthy participants (mean age: 21.7 y) in relation to the onset of each spontaneous eyeblink while the participants attentively viewed video clips from "Mr. Bean," a British television comedy. The story was chosen because our previous behavioral study demonstrated that the timing of spontaneous eyeblinks was synchronized across participants at the implicit breakpoints of the same video (3). ResultsThe participants spontaneously generated an average of 17.4 eyeblinks per minute (ranging from 3.1-51.0) while viewing the videos. Event-rel...

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“…To determine the optimal blink onset and offset thresholds, a lid "velocity" (i.e., change in arbitrary units/time) was computed. Because eye blinks are characterized by an extremely high eyelid velocity (VanderWerf et al 2003), the measured times of blink onset and offset were relatively insensitive to changes in thresholds. Thus the thresholds could easily be set to a high enough value to exclude most eyelid movements that were not blinks.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A preliminary version of this study has been published previously in abstract form (Walton and Gandhi 2005).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Behavioral Evaluation of Movement Cancellation

Walton

Gandhi²

2006

Journal of Neurophysiology

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. The countermanding saccade task has been used in many studies to investigate the neural mechanisms that underlie the decision to execute or restrain rapid eye movements. In this task, the presentation of a saccade target is sometimes followed by the appearance of a stop cue that indicates that the subject should cancel the planned movement. Performance has been modeled as a race between motor preparation and cancellation processes. The signal that reaches its activation threshold first determines whether a saccade is generated or cancelled. In these studies, an important parameter is the time required to process the stop cue, referred to as the stop signal reaction time (SSRT). The SSRT is estimated using statistical approaches, the validity of which has not been unequivocally established. A more direct measure of this parameter might be obtainable if a method was available to "unmask" the developing motor command. This can be accomplished by air-puffevoked blinks, which inhibit pontine omnipause neurons that serve as an inhibitory gate for the saccadic system. In the present study, brief puffs of air were used to elicit blinks at various times while rhesus monkeys performed a countermanding saccade task. If the developing motor command has not yet been cancelled, this should trigger a saccade. When blinks occurred between ϳ50 and 200 ms after target onset, saccades were often evoked. Saccades were rarely evoked more than ϳ70 ms after stop cue onset; this value represents a behavioral evaluation of SSRT and was comparable to the estimates obtained using standard statistical approaches. When saccades occurred near the SSRT on blink trials, they were often hypometric. Furthermore, Monte Carlo simulations were performed to model the effects of blink time on the race model. Overall, the study supports the validity of the statistical methods currently in use.

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Eyelid Movements: Behavioral Studies of Blinking in Humans Under Different Stimulus Conditions

Cited by 166 publications

References 40 publications

Noninvasive measurement of eye retraction during blinking

Noninvasive measurement of eye retraction during blinking

Blink-related momentary activation of the default mode network while viewing videos

Behavioral Evaluation of Movement Cancellation

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