Abstract
The importance of vision for postural equilibrium has long been known; traditionally, this visual contribution to the control of posture has been analyzed primarily in terms of optical and retinal phenomena. Recently, however, there has been some suggestion that binocular and monocular fixation of identical stimuli have differential effects. Three experiments were conducted in order to measure self-generated movement (sway during quiet standing) of the body’s center of gravity while field structure, ankle proprioception, and binocular/monocular fixation were varied. Field structure was varied from total darkness, to the presence of single and multiple LEDs in the dark, to full field structure (i.e., the richness of the feedback information was varied). Ankle proprioception was varied by changing foot position from side-by-side to heel-to-toe positions. Results indicate that (1) ankle-joint input is a significant factor in reducing sway, (2) binocular fixation attenuates sway relative to monocular fixation, under otherwise identical visual conditions, and (3) this difference persists in total darkness. Taken together, the data indicate that the visual influence on postural equilibrium results from a complex synergy that receives multimodal in-puts. A simple optical/retinal explanation is not sufficient.
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Parts of this research were submitted, as part of a doctoral dissertation, to the Graduate Faculty of Brandeis University; the remainder was completed during postdoctoral training at Columbia University.
Support for the research and for preparation of the manuscript was provided by Grants EY05929, AG06442, and T32 EY07057 from the NIH, Grant BNS 8617059 from the NSF, Fight For Sight award PD 85-060 in memory of Hermann M. Burian, and a grant from the Veterans Administration Medical Center of New York.
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Fox, C.R. Some visual influences on human postural equilibrium: Binocular versus monocular fixation. Perception & Psychophysics 47, 409–422 (1990). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03208174
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03208174