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 sponta...

Blinking serves several functions in animals, but it comes at the cost of intermittent blindness. Blinking can occur spontaneously, but it is commonly associated with head movements. As feeding animals often need to move the head down repeatedly to gather resources, intermittent blindness might represent a hitherto unappreciated cost of feeding. In addition, this cost might also be more prevale...

We report an infant with left eye blinking seizures accompanying a left (ipsilateral) fronto-temporal scalp EEG ictal pattern. The epileptogenic lesion was a left frontal encephalomalacia along the ventriculo-peritoneal shunt tract. The shunt was inserted for treatment of communicating hydrocephalus. This case illustrates the lateralizing value of the ictal blinking. Review of the literature su...

Reflex blinking was elicited by the electrical stimulation of peripheral nerves and various parts of the body of seven of 11 patients with Miller Fisher syndrome. This reflex blinking disappeared during recovery. Reflex blinking was elicited in normal subjects only with specific stimulation of the peripheral nerves of their upper extremities. This response may be due to a release phenomenon tra...

PURPOSE A study was designed to evaluate the efficacy of three different strategies aiming at increasing spontaneous eyeblink rate (SEBR) during computer use. METHODS A total of 12 subjects (5 female) with a mean age of 28.7 years were instructed to read a text presented on a computer display terminal during 15min. Four reading sessions (reference and three "blinking events" [BE]) were progra...

The precorneal tear film with its lacrimal, mucinous, and meibomian secretions is es­ sential for maintaining the structural in­ tegrity of the cornea in general and for en­ suring optical regularity of its anterior surface in particular. Replenishment and mixing of its components is brought about by normal blinking when the upper eyelid tarsal conjunctiva, preceded by the marginal tear strip, ...

BACKGROUND Meibomian gland obstruction induces hyposecretion of tear film lipids, which results in lipid layer deficiency and evaporative dry eye. Unfortunately, the importance of blinking in meibomian gland dysfunction has been largely overlooked, and it is not known whether incomplete blinking causes tear lipid deficiency, even in the unobstructed meibomian glands. CASE PRESENTATION A 38-ye...

Fluorescence blinking in nanocrystal quantum dots is known to exhibit power-law dynamics, and several different mechanisms have been proposed to explain this behavior. We have extended the measurement of quantum-dot blinking by characterizing fluctuations in the fluorescence of single dots over time scales from microseconds to seconds. The power spectral density of these fluctuations indicates ...

Reducing the energy footprint of data centers continues to receive significant attention due to both its financial and environmental impact. There are numerous methods that limit the impact of both factors, such as expanding the use of renewable energy or participating in automated demand-response programs. To take advantage of these methods, servers and applications must gracefully handle inte...