ArticleThe Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience2011
Characterizing the spontaneous blink generator: an animal model.
Article in The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 84 papers.
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Who cites it
84 citing papers in PubMed.
- Dopamine and Temporal Discounting: Revisiting Pharmacology and Individual Differences.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Trial
- The catecholamine precursor Tyrosine reduces autonomic arousal and decreases decision thresholds in reinforcement learning and temporal discounting.PLoS computational biology · 2022Trial
- Effects of meditation practice on spontaneous eyeblink rate.Psychophysiology · 2016Trial
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- The effects of increasing and decreasing dopamine on inhibition of return: a psychopharmacological investigation.Experimental brain research · 2026Article
- Emergent blink rate in early childhood is associated with neural origins of executive function.Communications psychology · 2026Article
- Model of ocular surface ion and water transport predicts efficacy of dry eye therapeutics.The Journal of general physiology · 2026Article
- Artificial intelligence analysis of facial movements and satisfaction in online medical lectures: a cross-sectional study.BMC medical education · 2026Article
- Demographics-robust spontaneous eye blinking slowing in patients with severe acquired brain injury.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2026Article
- Multiunit and oscillatory activity in macaque V1 is modulated by blinking in a context-dependent way.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2025Article
- Psychological Stress as a Mediator in the Relationships Between Personality Characteristics and Eye-Blinking Behavior.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Spontaneous eye blink-based machine learning for tracking clinical fluctuations in Parkinson's disease.NPJ Parkinson's disease · 2025Article
- Cognitive Rehabilitation as a Possible Therapeutic Approach in Patients with Blepharospasm.Journal of clinical medicine · 2025Article
- Article
- Spontaneous eye blinks in horses (Equus caballus) are modulated by attention.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Attentional Bias, Pupillometry, and Spontaneous Blink Rate: Eye Characteristic Assessment Within a Translatable Nicotine Cue Virtual Reality Paradigm.JMIR serious games · 2024Article
- The Story behind the Mask: A Narrative Review on Hypomimia in Parkinson's Disease.Brain sciences · 2024Review
- Functional Changes of the Ocular Surface Sensory Nerves Due to Contact Lens Use in Young Symptomatic and Asymptomatic Users.Investigative ophthalmology & visual science · 2023Article
- Article
- Activation of brain arousal networks coincident with eye blinks during resting state.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2023Article
24 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
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Abstract
Although spontaneous blinking is one of the most frequent human movements, little is known about its neural basis. We developed a rat model of spontaneous blinking to identify and better characterize the spontaneous blink generator. We monitored spontaneous blinking for 55 min periods in normal conditions and after the induction of mild dry eye or dopaminergic drug challenges. The normal spontaneous blink rate was 5.3 ± 0.3 blinks/min. Dry eye or 1 mg/kg apomorphine significantly increased and 0.1 mg/kg haloperidol significantly decreased the blink rate. Additional analyses revealed a consistent temporal organization to spontaneous blinking with a median 750 s period that was independent of the spontaneous blink rate. Dry eye and dopaminergic challenges significantly modified the regularity of the normal pattern of episodes of frequent blinking interspersed with intervals having few blinks. Dry eye and apomorphine enhanced the regularity of this pattern, whereas haloperidol reduced its regularity. The simplest explanation for our data is that the spinal trigeminal complex is a critical element in the generation of spontaneous blinks, incorporating reflex blinks from dry eye and indirect basal ganglia inputs into the blink generator. Although human subjects exhibited a higher average blink rate (17.6 ± 2.4) than rats, the temporal pattern of spontaneous blinking was qualitatively similar for both species. These data demonstrate that rats are an appropriate model for investigating the neural basis of human spontaneous blinking and suggest that the spinal trigeminal complex is a major element in the spontaneous blink generator.
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