EyeProprio

Proprioceptive coupling between the two eyes. A brief, passive stretch of the right eye’s lateral rectus muscle in humans is associated with an increase in the BOLD response in the left oculomotor and abducens nuclei, which innervate the extraocular muscles of the left eye. In complete darkness the left eye’s active movement mirrors the passive movement of the right eye, suggesting a role of extraocular muscle proprioception in ocular alignment (Cover illustration based on Balslev, Mitchell, Faria, Priba, Macfarlane. Proprioceptive contribution to oculomotor control in humans  https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/10970193/2022/43/16)

We could not fill this position so I am re-advertising the project.

A PhD studentship (competition funding, EASTBIO/BBSRC) is available with start on September 2023. The project investigates the neural substrate of motor eye dominance (the stable preference for one of the two eyes when sighting).

A full project description and information about the application process are available here.

You can contact me at daniela.balslev@st-andrews.ac.uk if you have questions.

Proprioceptive contribution to oculomotor control in humans

We have a new paper accepted for publication at Human Brain Mapping. We argue that in humans the afferent input from the extraocular muscles (EOM proprioception) facilitates yoked movements of the two eyes.

Thanks go to my co-authors Jen Macfarlane, Lukasz Priba, Alexandra Mitchell, and Patrick Faria. Shout-out to Patrick who was only a Masters student at the time he completed a very demanding eye-tracking experiment.

The highlights are:

• A brief, passive stretch of the right eye’s lateral rectus muscle in humans was associated with an increase in the BOLD response in the left oculomotor and abducens nuclei, which innervate the extraocular muscles of the left eye.
• The left eye’s active movement mirrored the passive movement of the right eye.
• Both neuroimaging and eye tracking suggest a proprioceptive coupling between the two eyes.

I will add a link to the open-access paper and the publicly available dataset as soon as I get a free moment.

Here is a 3-minute video presentation of this research (presentation at the Annual Conference of the Organisation for Human Brain Mapping in June 2022)

A phd studentship (competition funding, EASTBIO/BBSRC) is available with start on September 2022. The project investigates the neural substrate of motor eye dominance (the stable preference for one of the two eyes when sighting).

A full project description and information about the application process are available here.

You can contact me at daniela.balslev@st-andrews.ac.uk if you have questions.

It’s been a great pleasure to record a lecture on “Ocular Proprioception and Attention” this week, at the invitation of the organizers of the International Society for Proprioceptive Disorders.

The lecture is available here.

The lecture has three parts. The first part, “Oculoproprioception: Anatomy” presents the anatomy of the oculoproprioceptive system and allows me to offer a first glimpse into new, yet unpublished, results from my lab showing an oculoproprioceptive projection in the brainstem’s oculomotor nuclei in humans likely to play a role in inter-ocular alignment.

The second part, “Oculoproprioception: Methods” details the methods that are available to study this sensory modality in humans.

The final part “Attention” presents the contribution of the oculoproprioceptive signals to the allocation of attention in space and a new hypothesis about disease mechanisms in spatial neglect, which is a disorder of spatial attention in stroke patients.

I just realised that the lecture compresses thirteen years of research into just 90 minutes. I feel very privileged to have worked on a topic I am curious about and to meet great mentors, colleagues and students along the way.

If you are interested to join the lab as an Undergraduate, Master or PhD student or as a postdoctoral researcher please get in touch with Daniela at db87@st-andrews.ac.uk.