Findings offer new insights into how our movements are coordinated
How do our eyes stay focused on what we reach for? Keeping our eyes focused on what we reach for, whether it be an item at the grocery store or a ground ball on the baseball field, may appear seamless, but, in fact, is due to a complex neurological process involving intricate timing and coordination. In a newly published study in the journal Nature, a team of researchers sheds additional light on the machinations that ensure we don't look away from where we are reaching. The work centers on a form of coordinated looking and reach called "gaze anchoring" -- the temporary stoppage of eye movements in order to coordinate reaches. "Our results show that we anchor our gaze to the target of the reach movement, thereby looking at that target for longer periods," explains Bijan Pesaran, a professor at NYU's Center for Neural Science and one of the paper's authors. "This is what makes our reaches much more accurate. The big question has been: How...