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Interference between oculomotor and postural tasks in 7–8-year-old children and adults

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Abstract

Several studies in adults having observed the effect of eye movements on postural control provided contradictory results. In the present study, we explored the effect of various oculomotor tasks on postural control and the effect of different postural tasks on eye movements in eleven children (7.8 ± 0.5 years) and nine adults (30.4 ± 6.3 years). To vary the difficulty of the oculomotor task, three conditions were tested: fixation, prosaccades (reactive saccades made toward the target) and antisaccades (voluntary saccades made in the direction opposite to the visual target). To vary the difficulty of postural control, two postural tasks were tested: Standard Romberg (SR) and Tandem Romberg (TR). Postural difficulty did not affect oculomotor behavior, except by lengthening adults’ latencies in the prosaccade task. For both groups, postural control was altered in the antisaccade task as compared to fixation and prosaccade tasks. Moreover, a ceiling effect was found in the more complex postural task. This study highlighted a cortical interference between oculomotor and postural control systems.

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Notes

  1. We run statisical analyses on postural variables in the antero-posterior direction. Very similar results to that of ML direction presented further in the text were found.

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Acknowledgments

Authors are grateful to the children and to their parents for their precious collaboration.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire Vision Action Cognition EA7326, IUPDP, INC, Institut de Psychologie, Université Paris Descartes, Sorbonne Paris Cité, 71, Avenue Edouard Vaillant, Boulogne-Billancourt, 92774, France

    Agathe Legrand, Karine Doré Mazars & Christelle Lemoine

  2. Institut Universitaire de France, Paris, France

    Karine Doré Mazars

  3. UJF-Grenoble 1/CNRS/TIMC-IMAG UMR 5525, Grenoble, 38041, France

    Vincent Nougier & Isabelle Olivier

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  1. Agathe Legrand
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  2. Karine Doré Mazars
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  3. Christelle Lemoine
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  4. Vincent Nougier
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  5. Isabelle Olivier
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Correspondence to Agathe Legrand.

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Legrand, A., Doré Mazars, K., Lemoine, C. et al. Interference between oculomotor and postural tasks in 7–8-year-old children and adults. Exp Brain Res 234, 1667–1677 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-016-4565-0

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