Effect of gaze behavior in the coupling between visual informação and body sway of young adults

Abstract

Studies have shown a near relationship between control of gaze and posture. However, little is known about how gaze behavior affects the postural stability or whether this influence changes over the years. Particularly, eye movements either reduces or increases the body oscillations of both young adults and elderly in different visual tasks which could be associated with the behavior of sight during the search for relevant information in the visual environment. In this case, aging could lead to further changes in the behavior of the eyes and thus deteriorate the performance of posture resulting in falling. The aim of this study, therefore, is to investigate the effect of eye movement in the coupling between visual information and body sway in young adults. Fifteen young adults will be positioned on a force platform, inside a moving room. Participant will remain, as stable as possible, looking forward and perform four visual tasks: free gaze (exploratory eye movement), fixation in a target, saccadic eye movements in the horizontal plane (certainty of target location) and saccadic eye movements (uncertainty of uncertainty of target location). Gain, phase, and variability of position and velocity between the visual stimulus and the displacement of the center of pressure (COP) as well as the number and duration of fixations and latency between eye movements and visual stimuli in the same situations described above, will be calculated. ANOVAs will be used to verify the effect of gaze behavior of this coupling.