Hand-eye coordination is the ability of the body to use what the eyes are looking at to direct the hands in motion. This happens automatically for most people, and is not something that you think about unless you are involved in activities such as playing sports or video games that require lightning-quick hand-eye coordination.
Significance
Hand-eye coordination is important for everything from walking to fixing your hair. Someone who develops problems with hand-eye coordination, typically as a result of disease or as part of the aging process, will notice an increase of difficulty in nearly every activity she attempts.
Function
Your eyes focus on the target before your hands move at all. The eyes provide the target for the hands, keep them on track, and look ahead to other problems that may develop, all without conscious thought.
Benefits
Hand-eye coordination allows you to go through your day, performing necessary tasks without stopping to think about them. Baseball players who have a finely developed sense of hand eye coordination can watch a baseball spinning toward them and determine if it is a fast ball, curve or slider. Your teenagers can build and destroy cities, race cars and fly airplanes on game systems that require a finely developed sense of hand-eye coordination.
Misconceptions
It is not inevitable that aging decreases hand-eye coordination. There are some diseases, more common in the elderly, that can lead to problems with hand-eye coordination. Balint's Syndrome, for example, results in a total lack of hand-eye coordination, and often develops as a result of tumors, after a stroke or in conjunction with Alzheimer's Disease. Parkinson's Disease is another age-related ailment, and leads to slower reaction time and movement. Aside from disease, older people lose hand-eye coordination because of inactivity and lack of stimulation.
Expert Insight
Bijan Persaren, a neuroscientist at New York University's Center for Neural Science, points out that the hand and the eyes each work independently as well as together. For example, if you are reaching for an object, it doesn't matter to your brain where your hands are reaching from, only that your eyes are directed at the object.
References
- ScienceLine: Snap, Crackle, Walk: Listen to Your Brain to Understand Hand Eye Coordination
- The Eye Research Institute: Is the Hand Quicker Than the Eye?
- National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke: Parkinson's Disease
- National Institute of Health: Balint's Syndrome in Alzheimer's Disease
