Spontaneous eye blinks are entrained by finger tapping

D. Cong Khac , M. Sharikadze , G. Staude , H. Deubel , W. Wolf

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.

Mots clés: 2300 Human Experimental Psychology; 2330 Motor Processes; Spontaneous Endogenous Blinks

D. Cong Khac, M. Sharikadze, G. Staude, H. Deubel, W. Wolf. Spontaneous eye blinks are entrained by finger tapping. Human Movement Science, 2010, 29 (1), pp.1. ⟨10.1016/j.humov.2009.08.003⟩. ⟨hal-00614322⟩