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…
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