Saccadic suppression as a perceptual consequence of efficient sensorimotor estimation

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Abstract

Humans perform saccadic eye movements two to three times per second. When doing so, the nervous system strongly suppresses sensory feedback for extended periods of time in comparison to movement time. Why does the brain discard so much visual information? Here we suggest that perceptual suppression may arise from efficient sensorimotor computations, assuming that perception and control are fundamentally linked. More precisely, we show theoretically that a Bayesian estimator should reduce the weight of sensory information around the time of saccades, as a result of signal dependent noise and of sensorimotor delays. Such reduction parallels the behavioral suppression occurring prior to and during saccades, and the reduction in neural responses to visual stimuli observed across the visual hierarchy. We suggest that saccadic suppression originates from efficient sensorimotor processing, indicating that the brain shares neural resources for perception and control.

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Frederic Crevecoeur

Institute of Information and Communication Technologies, Electronics and Applied Mathematics, Université catholique de Louvain, Ottignies-Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

For correspondence
frederic.crevecoeur@uclouvain.be

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-1147-1153
Konrad P Kording

Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, Northwestern University, Chicago, United States

For correspondence
koerding@gmail.com

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

Funding

Fonds De La Recherche Scientifique - FNRS (1.B.087.15F)

Frederic Crevecoeur

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

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This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.