TY - JOUR
T1 - Eye-head coordination for the steering of locomotion in humans
T2 - An anticipatory synergy
AU - Grasso, Renato
AU - Prévost, Pascal
AU - Ivanenko, Yuri P.
AU - Berthoz, Alain
PY - 1998/9/4
Y1 - 1998/9/4
N2 - We investigated head and gaze orientation in six healthy volunteers walking along 90 corner trajectories, both at light and with eyes closed. We found that head and eyes systematically deviated toward the future direction of the curved trajectory. Anticipation lead was about 1 s. Strikingly, the same behaviour was observed in darkness. In backward (BW) locomotion along the trajectory (from end- to start-point), gaze deviated toward the opposite direction, such that the forward locomotor pattern did not appear time- reversed. Orienting movements displayed higher amplitude, reproducibility and time lead in the forward (FW) direction at light. We suggest that anticipatory orienting synergies belong to the behavioural repertoire of human navigation and may reflect the need to prepare a stable reference frame for intended action.
AB - We investigated head and gaze orientation in six healthy volunteers walking along 90 corner trajectories, both at light and with eyes closed. We found that head and eyes systematically deviated toward the future direction of the curved trajectory. Anticipation lead was about 1 s. Strikingly, the same behaviour was observed in darkness. In backward (BW) locomotion along the trajectory (from end- to start-point), gaze deviated toward the opposite direction, such that the forward locomotor pattern did not appear time- reversed. Orienting movements displayed higher amplitude, reproducibility and time lead in the forward (FW) direction at light. We suggest that anticipatory orienting synergies belong to the behavioural repertoire of human navigation and may reflect the need to prepare a stable reference frame for intended action.
KW - Anticipation
KW - Eye-head coordination
KW - Feed-forward control
KW - Head movements
KW - Locomotion
KW - Steering
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=0032483504&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=0032483504&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/S0304-3940(98)00625-9
DO - 10.1016/S0304-3940(98)00625-9
M3 - Article
C2 - 9774163
AN - SCOPUS:0032483504
VL - 253
SP - 115
EP - 118
JO - Neuroscience Letters
JF - Neuroscience Letters
SN - 0304-3940
IS - 2
ER -