Interaction between the oculomotor and postural systems during a dual-task: Compensatory reductions in head sway following visually-induced postural perturbations promote the production of accurate double-step saccades in standing human adults

Humans routinely scan their environment for useful information using saccadic eye movements and/or coordinated movements of the eyes and other body segments such the head and the torso. Most previous eye movement studies were conducted with seated subject and showed that single saccades and sequences of saccades (e.g. double-step saccades) made to briefly flashed stimuli were equally accurate and precise. As one can easily appreciate, most gaze shifts performed daily by a given person are not produced from a seated position, but rather from a standing position either as subjects perform an action from an upright stance or as they walk from one place to another. In the experiments presented here, we developed a new dual-task paradigm in order to study the interaction between the gaze control system and the postural system. Healthy adults (n = 12) were required to both maintain balance and produce accurate single-step and double-step eye saccades from a standing position. Visually-induced changes in head sway were evoked using wide-field background stimuli that either moved in the mediolateral direction or in the anteroposterior direction. We found that, as in the seated condition, single- and double-step saccades were very precise and accurate when made from a standing position, but that a tighter control of head sway was necessary in the more complex double-step saccades condition for equivalent results to be obtained. Our perturbation results support the “common goal” hypothesis that state that if necessary, as was the case during the more complex oculomotor task, context-dependent modulations of the postural system can be triggered to reduced instability and therefore support the accomplishment of a suprapostural goal.