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Vision and cervical influence

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Cervico-ocular coordination during neck rotation is distorted in people with whiplash-associated disorders. (1)

  • In patients suffering from whiplash associated disorders, there is an increased interaction between eye and neck muscle activity. These changes may involve the visual deficits and changes in function during cervical rotation such as postural control.
  • This may cause a disruption in the intricate coordination between eye and neck movement

Interaction between the muscles of the neck and the extraocular muscles of the myopic eye. An electromyographic study. (2)

  • The purpose of the study was to look at the functional relationships between the extraocular muscles of the myopic eye and the muscles of the neck
  • The study found that the trapezius and sternocleidomastoideus on the affected side had a marked difference in tonic activity of the named muscles between the myopic and the normal groups.
  • The authors points to that in correction of visual deficits attention should be paid to postural adjustment of the neck directed towards these two muscles

Cervical muscle afferents play a dominant role over vestibular afferents during bilateral vibration of neck muscles (3)

  • To investigate any possible contribution of vestibular stimulation, vibratory stimuli were applied bilaterally and separately to the splenius muscles of the neck and the planum mastoideum overlying the vestibular organs.
  • Responses were assessed by EMG activity recorded from tibialis anterior and gastrocnemius muscles of both legs and by changes in center of pressure as measured by a force platform.
  • EMG and postural responses were considerably lower and less consistent with mastoid vibration compared with neck muscles vibration.
  • The authors findings indicate that cervical muscles afferents play a dominant role over vestibular afferents when vibration is directed towards the neck muscles.

Quantitative study of muscle spindles in suboccipital muscles of human foetuses (4)

  • The proprioceptive inputs from the cervical musculature play an important role in head-eye co-ordination and postural processes. Deep cervical muscles in humans are shown to have high spindle content. The density, distribution and morphology of muscle spindles were studied in superior oblique capitis, inferior oblique capitis and rectus capitis posterior major and minor three small suboccipital muscles. (All except rectus capitis posterior major are directly attached to atlas)
  • The spindle density of superior oblique muscle was found to be 190, that of inferior oblique was 242 and the rectus capitis posterior contained 98 spindles per gram of muscle.

Effect of small head tilt on ocular fundus image: Consideration of proper head positioning for ocular fundus scanning (5)

  • The study, investigated the effect of minimal head tilt on the ocular cyclotorsion which cannot be easily detected.
  • Findings: Even very small head tilt was partially and variably compensated for, and caused significant rotation in the fundus image. We concluded that proper head positioning does not guarantee the minimal ocular cyclotorsion change of the eyes and image-adjusting technique would be a better solution for minimizing errors from ocular cyclotorsion changes.

Sources:

  1. Cervico-ocular coordination during neck rotation is distorted in people with whiplash-associated disorders. PubMed

  2. Interaction between the muscles of the neck and the extraocular muscles of the myopic eye. An electromyographic study. PubMed

  3. Cervical muscle afferents play a dominant role over vestibular afferents during bilateral vibration of neck muscles. PubMed

  4. Quantitative study of muscle spindles in suboccipital muscles of human foetuses. PubMed

  5. Effect of small head tilt on ocular fundus image: Consideration of proper head positioning for ocular fundus scanning. PubMed