Neuroscience Letters 584 (2015) 292–295

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Neuroscience Letters
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Short communication

Saccadic and smooth pursuit eye movements attenuate postural

sway similarly
Sérgio Tosi Rodrigues a,b,∗ , Paula Fávaro Polastri a , Jamile Cristina Carvalho a ,
José Angelo Barela c,d , Renato Moraes e , Fabio Augusto Barbieri a,f
a
Laboratory of Information, Vision, and Action (LIVIA), Department of Physical Education, Faculty of Sciences, University of São Paulo State,
Bauru Campus, Av. Luiz Edmundo Carrijo Coube, 14-01, Vargem Limpa, 17033-360 Bauru, SP, Brazil
b
Graduate Program in Design, Faculty of Architecture, Arts, and Communication, University of São Paulo State, Bauru Campus, Bauru, SP, Brazil
c
Department of Physical Education, Institute of Biosciences, University of São Paulo State, Rio Claro Campus, Rio Claro, SP, Brazil
d
Graduate Program in Human Movement Science, Institute of Physical Activity and Sport Sciences, Cruzeiro do Sul University, São Paulo, SP, Brazil
e
School of Physical Education and Sport at Ribeirão Preto, University of São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, SP, Brazil
f
Graduate Program in Motricity Sciences, Institute of Biosciences, University of São Paulo State, Rio Claro Campus, Rio Claro, SP, Brazil

h i g h l i g h t s

• Saccadic eye movement and smooth pursuit reduce body sway compared to fixation.
• Different visual frequencies affect equally the body sway in both eye movements.
• Saccadic eye movements are anticipated, favoring a feed-forward modulation.
• Smooth pursuit eye movements appear to be controlled in an on-line manner.

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Saccadic eye movements reduce body sway, yet visually pursuing a moving dot seems to increase body
Received 21 July 2014 sway. However, how these two types of eye movements affect postural control remains ambiguous,
Received in revised form 23 October 2014 particularly for smooth pursuit eye movements. The aim of this study was to examine the effects of
Accepted 27 October 2014
saccade and smooth pursuit eye movements on body sway magnitude during low and high frequencies.
Available online 4 November 2014
Ten young adults (19.5 ± 1.9 years) participants were required to stand upright, barefoot for 70 s using a
bipedal stance, with feet hip width apart, fixating or pursuing a target that was displayed on a monitor
Keywords:
positioned 100 cm away from their eyes. Each participant performed three trials using both types of
Postural control
Saccades
eye movements, in particular, slow and fast saccades, and slow and fast smooth pursuit movements.
Smooth pursuit Body sway was obtained using reflective markers attached to a participant’s head and trunk, which
Eye movements were recorded by two video cameras. The results indicated that body sway was reduced during both
saccadic eye movements and smooth pursuit movements when compared to fixation, independent of
visual frequencies. These results suggested similarities in the control of saccades and smooth pursuit on
postural control.
© 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Body sway is attenuated while performing saccadic eye move-
ments when compared to a fixed gaze on a static target [1],
∗ Corresponding author at: Laboratory of Information, Vision, and Action (LIVIA),
Department of Physical Education, Faculty of Sciences, University of São Paulo State,
Bauru Campus, Av. Luiz Edmundo Carrijo Coube, 14-01, Vargem Limpa, 17033-360
Bauru, SP, Brazil. Tel.: +55 14 3103 6082x7617; fax: +55 1431036071.
E-mail address: srodrigu@fc.unesp.br (S.T. Rodrigues).
especially when combined with a wide support base and a high
frequency of visual stimuli [2]. Saccade conditions seem to require
greater postural stability to spatially allow more accurate gaze
shifts, indicating a functional integration of posture and gaze con-
trol [1], which is attained by afferent and efferent copy mechanisms.
The afferent mechanism for the visual stabilization of posture tries
to minimize the changes of the projected image on the retina; [3]
whereas, the efferent copy mechanism tries to attenuate body sway
in an attempt to connect pre- and post-saccadic views of the scene
[4], which favors the spatial accuracy of the saccade with respect
to the target location. Despite all the importance of saccades, this

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neulet.2014.10.045
0304-3940/© 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.
 S.T. Rodrigues et al. / Neuroscience Letters 584 (2015) 292–295
is not the only important eye motion, since sports and other activ-
ities also require eye movements to track (pursuit) objects moving
in the environment [5].
Although, saccadic eye movements reduce body sway [1,2,6,7],
visually pursuing a moving dot systematically increases body sway
[8]. The different effects between these two eye movements on
body sway may be attributed to the suppression of vision dur-
ing saccades, as well as the continuous participation of smooth
pursuit eye movements in the visual control of posture [8] in a non-
stationary spatial frame of reference [9]. In addition, while saccade
is a discrete movement that quickly changes the orientation of the
eyes, translating the object of interest’s image to the fovea, smooth
pursuit is a continuous movement that rotates the eyes to com-
pensate for the motion of the visual object, minimizing blur [10].
Furthermore, saccades have their magnitude established before the
movement begins without the possibility of corrections during its
course; whereas smooth pursuit movements are feedback-based
such that their initiation depends on target motion. Smooth pursuit
eye movement’s velocity is linearly related to the target’s velocity
[4,11].
How these two eye movements affect postural control is still a
matter of debate, particularly for smooth pursuit eye movements.
Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine the effects of sac-
cade and smooth pursuit eye movements on body sway magnitude
during low and high frequencies. Considering, previous studies
[1,2,8], it was hypothesized that body sway will decrease during
saccades and increase during smooth pursuit movements, when
compared to fixation control conditions. Different stimuli frequen-
cies were expected to clarify whether changes in task demands
interact with effects of distinct eye movements on postural control
performance.
2. Material and methods
Ten young adults (19.5 ± 1.91 years) participated in this study.
All participants were blinded to the purposes of the experiment and
reported no history of falls, dizziness, or postural instability. One
participant wore corrective glasses during the experiment. Prior
to experimental procedures, participants signed a written consent
form approved by the local ethics committee.
Participants were required to stand upright, barefoot for 70 s
using a bipedal stance with feet hip width apart, fixating or pursu-
ing a target that was displayed in a monitor positioned 100 cm away
from their eyes. The target was a red dot 2 cm in diameter on a white
background with a subtended visual angle of approximately 1.15◦ .
The total distance between right and left side targets comprised
a visual angle of 11◦ to avoid head movements [1]. Stimuli were
generated by the software Flash Mx (Macromedia) and presented
on a LCD monitor (37.5 cm × 30 cm, LG, Faltron L1952H, 50/60 Hz,
0.8 A). Each participant performed three trials under each of the
following experimental conditions: a) eye fixed on the target—the
target was displayed in the center of the monitor throughout the
trial and the participants fixated their gaze on it; b) slow saccadic
eye movement—participants performed saccades directed to the
target appearing on one side of the monitor, then disappearing and
reappearing immediately on the opposite side with a frequency of
0.5 Hz; c) fast saccadic eye movement—same task as the previous
condition, but with a frequency of 1.1 Hz; d) slow smooth pursuit
eye movement—participants pursued a target moving rectilinear
and uniformly from one side of the monitor to the other with their
eyes, with a frequency of 0.5 Hz; and e) fast smooth pursuit eye
movement—same task as the previous condition, but with a fre-
quency of 1.1 Hz. Trials were performed in a randomized order. One
experimenter observed and verified each participant’s appropriate
eye movements using a small camera (Microsoft webcam, model
293
1407, 60 Hz) positioned above the monitor. After data collection,
videos were analyzed to reconfirm the required eye movements
for each condition.
Body sway was measured using reflective markers attached
to the participant’s head (posterior part, just above the occipital
bone) and trunk (between the scapulae). The reflective mark-
ers were recorded using two video cameras (Sony DCR DVD 205
and 405) during each task with a sample frequency of 60 Hz. The
recorded video images of all trials were cropped, tridimensionally
reconstructed, and analyzed based on the space coordinates of the
tracked markers (Software APAS, Ariel Dynamics, version 1).
A trial started 10 s after the subject and experimental condition
commenced. The following dependent variables were obtained:
trunk and head mean sway amplitude in the anterior–posterior
(AP) and medial-lateral (ML) directions as the standard deviation in
direction for the positional data throughout the trial; mean velocity
in the AP and ML directions using displacement in each direction
divided by the time of each trial; trunk and head total displacement
calculated from the total trajectory length of the respective marker
during the trial; and the sway area as the 95% confidence ellipse
area of the data. Furthermore, the trunk and head mean and 95% of
the frequency were calculated by employing spectral analysis of the
position time series separately in each direction (Matlab software
version 7.10, Mathworks).
For each dependent variable, a one-way analyses of variance
(ANOVAs) with the 5 conditions (fixation, slow saccade, fast sac-
cade, slow smooth pursuit, and fast smooth pursuit) treated as a
repeated measures factor was performed. Tukey’s post-hoc tests
were carried out to identify the significant differences when the
main effect was identified. All the analyses were performed using
SPSS (version 15.0) and the significance level was set at 0.05.
3. Results
The ANOVA indicated significant differences only for the trunk
and head mean sway amplitude in the AP direction (trunk:
F4,36 = 3.99, p = 0.05 | head: F4,36 = 4.67, p = 0.02), total displace-
ment (trunk: F4,36 = 5.15, p = 0.01 | head: F4,36 = 4.52, p = 0.02), and
mean frequency in the AP direction (trunk: F4,36 = 3.34, p = 0.04
| head: F4,36 = 2.77, p = 0.05). No statistical significant differences
were found for any other variable tested.
Trunk and head mean sway amplitude in the AP direction and
total displacement were significantly affected by the visual condi-
tion (Table 1). Specifically, post-hoc analysis indicated significantly
larger trunk and head sway during eye fixation when compared to
the other four conditions. However, mean sway trunk and head fre-
quencies, in the AP direction, were decreased during the fixation
condition when compared to the other four conditions (Table 1).
4. Discussion
We manipulated visual conditions (fixation, saccades, and
smooth pursuit eye movements) in order to examine their effects
on postural control. We hypothesized that body sway would
decrease during saccades and increase during smooth pursuit when
compared to a fixed gaze. The findings of this present study con-
firmed our hypothesis for saccadic eye movements, but not for
smooth pursuit eye movements. That is, eye movement using either
type of movement, saccades or smooth pursuit, reduced body sway
when compared to fixation, which concurs with the notion that
reduction of body sway occurred to facilitate eye movements [1,2],
contradictory to what previous studies reported about smooth pur-
suit effects on body sway [8]. Methodological differences between
this study and the study of Laurens et al. [8] might account for
the different results. Their experimental situation included hor-
294 S.T. Rodrigues et al. / Neuroscience Letters 584 (2015) 292–295

Table 1
Means and standard deviations of the global analyses of body sway.

Fixation Slow saccades Fast saccades Slow smooth pursuit Fast smooth pursuit

Trunk
Mean sway amplitude (cm) AP 0.73 ± 0.28a 0.50 ± 0.17 0.49 ± 0.15 0.50 ± 0.13 0.57 ± 0.27
ML 0.28 ± 0.14 0.28 ± 0.14 0.23 ± 0.06 0.21 ± 0.07 0.27 ± 0.22
Mean velocity (cm/s) AP 0.33 ± 0.08 0.33 ± 0.08 0.32 ± 0.07 0.34 ± 0.07 0.35 ± 0.05
ML 0.18 ± 0.07 0.19 ± 0.06 0.16 ± 0.04 0.18 ± 0.04 0.18 ± 0.04
Total displacement (cm) 1908.18 ± 776.34a 1426.85 ± 388.27 1279.39 ± 359.73 1356.78 ± 401.43 1476.54 ± 537.34
Sway area (cm2 ) 1.34 ± 1.03 0.98 ± 0.67 0.76 ± 0.52 0.86 ± 0.71 0.97 ± 0.70
Mean frequency (Hz) AP 0.13 ± 0.02a 0.16 ± 0.02 0.17 ± 0.02 0.16 ± 0.02 0.17 ± 0.03
ML 0.22 ± 0.05 0.24 ± 0.03 0.23 ± 0.06 0.23 ± 0.04 0.24 ± 0.07
95% of the total frequency (Hz) AP 0.39 ± 0.06 0.43 ± 0.05 0.43 ± 0.06 0.43 ± 0.05 0.42 ± 0.07
ML 0.70 ± 0.16 0.72 ± 0.14 0.73 ± 0.21 0.67 ± 0.14 0.67 ± 0.20

Head
Mean sway amplitude (cm) AP 0.89 ± 0.31a 0.63 ± 0.15 0.62 ± 0.15 0.61 ± 0.13 0.66 ± 0.24
ML 0.32 ± 0.18 0.33 ± 0.16 0.28 ± 0.09 0.26 ± 0.08 0.34 ± 0.25
Mean velocity (cm/s) AP 0.44 ± 0.10 0.44 ± 0.10 0.42 ± 0.07 0.46 ± 0.07 0.47 ± 0.07
ML 0.24 ± 0.07 0.25 ± 0.06 0.23 ± 0.05 0.24 ± 0.05 0.25 ± 0.05
Total displacement (cm) 2382.98 ± 859.11a 1845.54 ± 44.99 1678.17 ± 421.39 1746.08 ± 400.87 1832.51 ± 595.71
Sway area (cm2 ) 2.05 ± 1.37 1.54 ± 0.93 1.28 ± 0.80 1.36 ± 0.80 1.50 ± 0.98
Mean frequency (Hz) AP 0.14 ± 0.02a 0.16 ± 0.02 0.16 ± 0.02 0.17 ± 0.02 0.17 ± 0.03
ML 0.22 ± 0.04 0.24 ± 0.05 0.25 ± 0.07 0.22 ± 0.04 0.24 ± 0.07
95% of the total AP 0.41 ± 0.07 0.44 ± 0.06 0.43 ± 0.05 0.46 ± 0.05 0.86 ± 1.41
frequency (Hz) ML 0.72 ± 0.14 0.71 ± 0.14 0.74 ± 0.21 0.64 ± 0.12 0.71 ± 0.14

AP: anterior–posterior | ML: medial–lateral.

a
Fixation was different from the other four conditions.

izontal and vertical sinusoidal stimulus motions at 0.33 Hz, a
dark background (no large-field condition) or randomly positioned
white dots on a dark background (stationary large-field condition
−3.1 m × 2.5 m), a force plate covered with a foam-cushion (10 cm
height), participants wore a head-mounted device which restricted
the horizontal visual field to 80◦ , and their non-dominant eye was
occluded to suppress stereopsis cues. Differently, this experiment
used only horizontal and linear stimulus motions at 0.5 and 1.1 Hz,
a white background on a computer monitor (37.5 cm × 30 cm) in
a fully illuminated room, no foam-cushion on a force plate, no
head-mounted device, full horizontal and vertical fields of view,
and binocular vision available. It is possible that a combination
of different aspects resulted and affected differently body sway of
participants from each study. Based upon the observed results, we
present two lines of reasoning related to eye movement and body
sway effects. First, particular characteristics of each gaze behavior
induced the same sway attenuation responses. Second, similarities
between the control of saccades and smooth pursuit movements
have contributed to the observed effects on postural control.
The availability of visual information, independent of the actual
gaze behavior, stabilizes body sway, which is demonstrated by
increased sway magnitude during the absence of vision [12].
Despite, previous studies indicating that eye movement increases
body sway [9,13,14], eye movement signals can be used to con-
tribute to postural stabilization [3,9]. However, when eyes are
moved, the stationary large-field stimulus effect is reduced. This
reduction is compensated by retinal flow which is combined
with information about the eye movements in order to recon-
struct a fixed spatial reference [8] requiring a higher allocation
of central processing resources in order to support the visual per-
formance and spatial requirements of the gaze behavior involved,
further attenuating postural sway [1,6,15]. In addition, the “out-
flow” hypothesis suggests that a branch of the neural efferent
signals (i.e., “corollary discharge” or “efference copy”) informs the
central nervous system and the mechanisms of afferent and effer-
ent motion perception to maintain visual consistency [3].
Eye movements during quiescent stances create a functional
integration of postural and gaze control [1,2], which in our study
occurred independent of task and stimulus frequency. Individu-
als might have tried to minimize changes of the projected image
on the retina, between saccades to connect pre- and post-saccadic
views of the scene [4] or, during smooth pursuit eye movements,
to select a constant target to follow [8], in order to keep a stable
relationship between visual information and body orientation [3].
Although the distinctive properties of saccadic and smooth pursuit
eye movements are well known [8,11], both eye movements share
some neural networks, and, by implication, some similar process-
ing mechanisms [4]. For instance, during our saccadic conditions,
the stimulus disappeared on one side of the screen and reappeared
immediately on the other side; even with a predictable target loca-
tion, the saccadic task required spatial accuracy, which indicates
how body sway attenuation facilitated saccade planning and per-
formance [1,2]. Similarly, during the smooth pursuit eye movement
conditions, the stimulus moved linearly and horizontally with a
constant velocity, alternating between right and left directions,
which required the eyes to change pursuit from a scan with a hor-
izontal velocity, then momentarily stop, followed by a reversal in
their direction and then, presumably catching up with the stimulus
velocity in the other direction [8].
Both gaze conditions required relatively high spatial accuracy
and attentional resources for each stimulus’ cycle, especially during
the transition between the refresh of the stimulus on the opposite
side of the monitor during the saccades stimulus and during the
transition between the direction of motion for the smooth pursuit
stimulus, which potentially explain the improvement in postural
control leading to body sway attenuation under both conditions
[4]. However, the strategies to control the changes of the moments
of transition appear different between eye movement conditions.
That is, saccadic eye movements can be anticipated, favoring a feed-
forward modulation of body sway [3,16] while smooth pursuit eye
movements appear to be controlled using an on-line mechanism
due to its continuous visual information processing during a task.
Even with consistent and relevant results, this study has a few
limitations. Despite monitoring eye movements using video to
guarantee proper task performance, kinematics of the line of gaze
in space and identification of fixation duration during each con-
dition were not quantified. This information is important, mainly
to understand gaze control during a task. This procedure for future
studies is recommended. In addition, our manipulation of the visual
stimulus frequency (0.5 and 1.1 Hz) may has been insufficient to
 S.T. Rodrigues et al. / Neuroscience Letters 584 (2015) 292–295
influence a measurable body sway, but frequencies higher than
1.1 Hz might interfere with the functional integration of postural
and gaze control [17]. Therefore, we recommend that future stud-
ies use frequencies that withhold time to plan and which might
impose important constraints on the oculomotor system.
5. Conclusion
In conclusion, saccades and smooth pursuit eye movements
influenced body sway similarly, reducing the sway magnitude
when compared to a fixed gaze. In addition, different visual fre-
quencies (low or high) had similar effects on body sway attenuation
for both saccadic and smooth pursuit tasks.
Acknowledgement
This study was supported by a scholarship for Jamile Cristina
Carvalho (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tec-
nológico).
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