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REVIEW/MISE AU POINT
a
CNRS UMR 5105, laboratoire de psychologie et neurocognition, universit de Savoie, 73376 Le-Bourget-du-lac, France
b
Academic Department of Neuro-otology, Division of Neuroscience and Mental Health, Imperial College London,
Charing Cross Hospital, Fulham Palace Road, London W6 8RF, UK
KEYWORDS Summary Vision has been shown for almost a century to be heavily involved in postural con-
Vision; trol. However, the mechanism by which it operates is still an open debate. The purpose of this
Postural control; manuscript is to review the evidence supporting the view that there are two modes of visual
Motion parallax; detection of body sway: ocular and extraocular. The former is based on the characteristics of
Efference copy the visual ow (retinal slip), the second one is based on either the copy of the motor command
(efference copy) or the extraocular muscle afferents (re-afferences) consecutive to eye move-
ments. Results from the literature indicate that these two modes of visual detection of body
sway are effective and can operate congruently. For sufciently large body sway with respect
to eyetarget distance, the ocular and the extraocular perception systems could provide two
sources of visual information about body displacements. However, the afferent system might
remain the only one used for small lateral body sway.
2008 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.
Rsum Le rle de la vision dans la rgulation posturale a t mis en vidence depuis plus dun
MOTS CLS sicle. Toutefois, les mcanismes par lesquels elle opre restent lobjet de dbats. Le but de ce
Vision ; manuscrit est de faire le point sur les travaux qui supportent lide selon laquelle la dtection
Contrle postural ; visuelle des oscillations corporelles pourrait se faire selon deux modes : partir dinformations
Parallaxe de soit purement oculaires, soit extraoculaires. La premire est base sur les caractristiques
mouvement ; du ux visuel (glissement rtinien), alors que la seconde est base soit sur la copie de la
Copie effrente commande motrice oculaire (copie effrente), soit sur les affrences musculaires conscutives
aux dplacements de lil. Les rsultats de la littrature font apparatre que ces deux modes
de dtection sont effectifs et peuvent oprer de concert dans la rgulation posturale. Lorsque
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: Michel.guerraz@univ-savoie.fr (M. Guerraz).
0987-7053/$ see front matter 2008 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.neucli.2008.09.007
392 M. Guerraz, A.M. Bronstein
suggest, however, that spontaneous nystagmus per se in all, postural stability increases with the enrichment of
cannot be directly incriminated. CN is an ocular motor the visual environment [56]. Hence, many physiological
disorder characterized by involuntary oscillatory eye move- and physical parameters affect visual control of pos-
ments (46 Hz) that disrupt foveal target xation [21,37]. ture (see [13]: we note the object size and localization
Despite almost constant eye movement and, therefore, [10,54,56], binocular disparity [32], visual motion [3] but
large amount of retinal image slip, subjects with CN rarely also visual acuity [56] and spatial frequency [48] to name
complain of either oscillopsia (i.e. they retain spatial con- a few). Hence, the functionality of the retina and the
stancy) or impairment of visuo-motor coordination [51]. In geometrical structure of the visual ow deserve to be
agreement, they were repeatedly found: considered.
suggested that visually-induced postural responses might be [17] Clement G, Jacquin T, Berthoz A. Habituation of postural read-
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No conict of interest does exist. Neuroophthalmol 1992;12:16983.
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