Saccade suppression depends on context

  1. Eckart Zimmermann  Is a corresponding author
  1. University of Düsseldorf, Germany

Abstract

Although our eyes are in constant movement, we remain unaware of the high-speed stimulation produced by the retinal displacement. Vision is drastically reduced at the time of saccades. Here, I investigated whether the reduction of the unwanted disturbance could be established through a saccade-contingent habituation to intra-saccadic displacements. In more than 100 context trials, participants were exposed either to an intra-saccadic or to a post-saccadic disturbance or to no disturbance at all. After induction of a specific context, I measured peri-saccadic suppression. Displacement discrimination thresholds of observers were high after participants were exposed to an intra-saccadic disturbance. However, after exposure to a post-saccadic disturbance or a context without any intra-saccadic stimulation, displacement discrimination improved such that observers were able to see shifts as during fixation. Saccade-contingent habituation might explain why we do not perceive trans-saccadic retinal stimulation during saccades.

Data availability

All measured data have been deposited in OSF under DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/TZA7F.

The following data sets were generated

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Eckart Zimmermann

    Institute for Experimental Psychology, University of Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany
    For correspondence
    eckart.zimmermann@hhu.de
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-1964-2711

Funding

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (ZI/1456)

  • Eckart Zimmermann

H2020 European Research Council (757184)

  • Eckart Zimmermann

The funders supported the current study.

Reviewing Editor

  1. Marisa Carrasco, New York University, United States

Ethics

Human subjects: The study was approved by the ethics committee of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences of the Heinrich-Heine-University Duesseldorf (ZI01-2019-01). Written informed consent about pseudonymized data collection, storage and publication was obtained prior to each experiment in accordance with the declaration of Helsinki.

Version history

  1. Received: June 26, 2019
  2. Accepted: March 2, 2020
  3. Accepted Manuscript published: March 5, 2020 (version 1)
  4. Accepted Manuscript updated: March 6, 2020 (version 2)
  5. Version of Record published: March 24, 2020 (version 3)
  6. Version of Record updated: March 27, 2020 (version 4)

Copyright

© 2020, Zimmermann

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.

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  1. Eckart Zimmermann
(2020)
Saccade suppression depends on context
eLife 9:e49700.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.49700

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https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.49700

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