Neural correlates of eye blinking; improved by simultaneous fMRI and EOG measurement

Yoon, Ho-Sub; Chung, Jun‐Young; Song, Miyeon; Park, HyunWook

doi:10.1016/j.neulet.2005.01.077

Cited by 54 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…The reciprocal changes in the two networks have not been reported in previous studies of the neural correlates of eyeblinks (15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20). We suggest two critical differences that may explain the activation of the DMN in response to each eyeblink in the present study.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 42%

“…We infer that the DMN would be activated by natural unconscious blinks but not intentional eyeblinks. Second, the participants attentively viewed videos in the present study, but participants in previous studies viewed static crosses or simple visual stimuli, such as a checkerboard pattern (17,19,20). The attentional level of the participants should have been higher in the present study because the videos contained rich visual and social information that changed dynamically over time and left room for attentional disengagement.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 77%

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Blink-related momentary activation of the default mode network while viewing videos

Nakano

Katô

Morito

et al. 2012

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

196

143

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It remains unknown why we generate spontaneous eyeblinks every few seconds, more often than necessary for ocular lubrication. Because eyeblinks tend to occur at implicit breakpoints while viewing videos, we hypothesized that eyeblinks are actively involved in the release of attention. We show that while viewing videos, cortical activity momentarily decreases in the dorsal attention network after blink onset but increases in the default-mode network implicated in internal processing. In contrast, physical blackouts of the video do not elicit such reciprocal changes in brain networks. The results suggest that eyeblinks are actively involved in the process of attentional disengagement during a cognitive behavior by momentarily activating the default-mode network while deactivating the dorsal attention network.functional MRI | natural vision W e spontaneously generate an eyeblink every few seconds-15-20 per minute, on average. These spontaneous eyeblinks are believed to occur to lubricate the cornea, but the rate is several times more than required for ocular lubrication (1, 2). Therefore, it remains an open question why eyeblinks are generated so frequently at the cost of blocking visual input for a period amounting to 10% of our waking hours (3).Spontaneous eyeblinks tend to occur at breakpoints of attention, such as the end of a sentence while reading (4), a pause by the speaker while listening to a speech (5), and implicit breakpoints while viewing videos (3). That eyeblinks occur not only at explicit but also at implicit breakpoints raises the possibility that spontaneous eyeblinks play an active role in the release of attention from external stimuli while attentively engaging in a cognitive task. Clinical neurological studies support this possibility. People who had a difficulty of voluntary eye movements often generate eyeblinks to terminate the spasms of visual fixations (6-8).Assuming the role of the eyeblink in disengaging attention, each spontaneous eyeblink should be associated with inhibition of the dorsal attentional network that mediates the allocation of attention (9), and with an activation of the default-mode network (DMN), which is known to counteract the dorsal attention network (10) and is implicated in introspection (11, 12). We hypothesized that spontaneous eyeblinks control the disengagement of attention by momentarily deactivating the dorsal attention network while activating the DMN.To test this hypothesis, we used fMRI to examine the cortical activity of 10 healthy participants (mean age: 21.7 y) in relation to the onset of each spontaneous eyeblink while the participants attentively viewed video clips from "Mr. Bean," a British television comedy. The story was chosen because our previous behavioral study demonstrated that the timing of spontaneous eyeblinks was synchronized across participants at the implicit breakpoints of the same video (3). ResultsThe participants spontaneously generated an average of 17.4 eyeblinks per minute (ranging from 3.1-51.0) while viewing the videos. Event-rel...

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 42%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 77%

Blink-related momentary activation of the default mode network while viewing videos

Nakano

Katô

Morito

et al. 2012

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

196

143

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show abstract

“…Spontaneous blinking is also considered a natural urge and neuroimaging studies examining brain activation during blinking and suppression of blinking begin to emerge [24,25,26]. Using simultaneous eye blinking and fMRI measurements, Chung et al [25] analyzed brain activity in two conditions: (1) during spontaneous blinking (voluntary blinking also allowed), and (2) during voluntary inhibition of blinking for 20, 25 or 30 s. Interestingly, in the second condition significant activation was observed in the following cortical areas: the left superior frontal gyrus, the right medial frontal gyrus, the left precentral gyrus, the right fusiform gyrus, the right precuneus, the right superior temporal gyrus and the right cingulate gyrus.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spontaneous Eyeblink Rate in Focal Cerebrovascular Lesions

Anagnostou¹,

Kouzi²,

Vassilopoulou³

et al. 2011

Eur Neurol

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Background: The involvement of different brain areas in spontaneous eyeblink rate control is largely unknown. Methods: Spontaneous eyeblink rate was assessed in 211 consecutive acute stroke patients within two days after symptom onset and was correlated with infarction location as well as with other parameters such as the presence of hemineglect or significant small vessel disease in MRI or CT scans. Blink rates were measured in two conditions: (1) during a trivial conversation requiring no cognitive effort and (2) during mental arithmetic. Results: Patients and healthy controls displayed similar average blink rates at rest (19.1 and 17.3 blinks/min, respectively) and during mental arithmetic (22.6 and 20.2 blinks/min, respectively). The latter condition reliably increased blinking frequency in both patients and control subjects. The subgroups of patients with frontal, frontoparietal and frontotemporal infarctions exhibited a significantly higher blink rate modulation, expressed as an increased relative difference of blinking at rest compared with blinking during mental arithmetic. Conclusion: As a whole, patients with acute cerebrovascular disease do not show changes in blink rate. Subjects with frontal infarcts, however, systematically increase their blink rates during cognitive effort, most probably due to a lack of frontal inhibitory control on blinking modulation.

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“…OPNs receive direct connections from the frontal eye fields (Stanton et al 1988) and from the supplementary eye fields (Shook et al 1988). Imaging data (Bodis-Wollner et al 1999;Yoon et al 2005) show voluntary and spontaneous blinkrelated activation in the same areas.…”

Section: Resumption Of Firing Of the Opnsmentioning

confidence: 94%

Macaque Pontine Omnipause Neurons Play No Direct Role in the Generation of Eye Blinks

Schultz

Williams

Busettini

2010

Journal of Neurophysiology

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We recorded the activity of pontine omnipause neurons (OPNs) in two macaques during saccadic eye movements and blinks. As previously reported, we found that OPNs fire tonically during fixation and pause about 15 ms before a saccadic eye movement. In contrast, for blinks elicited by air puffs, the OPNs paused Ͻ2 ms before the onset of the blink. Thus the burst in the agonist orbicularis oculi motoneurons (OOMNs) and the pause in the antagonist levator palpabrae superioris motoneurons (LPSMNs) necessarily precede the OPN pause. For spontaneous blinks there was no correlation between blink and pause onsets. In addition, the OPN pause continued for 40 -60 ms after the time of the maximum downward closing of the eyelids, which occurs around the end of the OOMN burst of firing. LPSMN activity is not responsible for terminating the OPN pause because OPN resumption was very rapid, whereas the resumption of LPSMN firing during the reopening phase is gradual. OPN pause onset does not directly control blink onset, nor does pause offset control or encode the transition between the end of the OOMN firing and the resumption of the LPSMNs. The onset of the blink-related eye transients preceded both blink and OPN pause onsets. Therefore they initiated while the saccadic short-lead burst neurons were still fully inhibited by the OPNs and cannot be saccadic in origin. The abrupt dynamic change of the vertical eye transients from an oscillatory behavior to a single time constant exponential drift predicted the resumption of the OPNs.

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Neural correlates of eye blinking; improved by simultaneous fMRI and EOG measurement

Cited by 54 publications

References 16 publications

Blink-related momentary activation of the default mode network while viewing videos

Blink-related momentary activation of the default mode network while viewing videos

Spontaneous Eyeblink Rate in Focal Cerebrovascular Lesions

Macaque Pontine Omnipause Neurons Play No Direct Role in the Generation of Eye Blinks

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