Abstract

Duel sports, such as fencing, boxing and table-tennis, like some “face-to-face” individuals in team sports, give rise to extremely fast visuo-motor interactions. These situations, characterized by a high level of uncertainty in space and time, require a very high level of visual attention from protagonists. Investigations carried out in these sports reveal, at the highest level of world ranking, an over-representation of manual left-handers, the majority of them having a right ocular dominance. Right-handers having a left dominant eye are also represented at a relatively high-rate. Experimental tasks with spatio-temporal uncertainty implemented in the laboratory have made it possible to confirm a visuo-motor advantage, in response time, in subjects having an eye–hand crossed laterality.

Objectives The purpose of this study was to identify the central process that would explain such an advantage. In order to identify such a central process, the study will, on one hand, update the data on ocular dominance, and on the other hand, it will review and evaluate a list of works able to clarify the core problem revealed by the sporting duels.

Current data It appears that the function of the dominant eye uses the geniculo-striated pathway, i.e., a pathway ipsilateral between the eye and the hemispheric cortex. In addition, it was confirmed that the specific effects of ocular dominance on eye–hand coordination only appears at a certain level of space uncertainty.