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Inhibition of Voluntary Saccadic Eye Movement Commands by Abrupt Visual Onsets
Inhibition of Voluntary Saccadic Eye Movement Commands by Abrupt Visual Onsets
- Publication Year :
- 2008
- Publisher :
- American Physiological Society, 2008.
-
Abstract
- Saccadic eye movements are made both to explore the visual world and to react to sudden sensory events. We studied the ability for humans to execute a voluntary (i.e., nonstimulus-driven) saccade command in the face of a suddenly appearing visual stimulus. Subjects were required to make a saccade to a memorized location when a central fixation point disappeared. At varying times relative to fixation point disappearance a visual distractor appeared at a random location. When the distractor appeared at locations distant from the target virtually no saccades were initiated in a 30- to 40-ms interval beginning 70–80 ms after appearance of the distractor. If the distractor was presented slightly earlier relative to saccade initiation then saccades tended to have smaller amplitudes, with velocity profiles suggesting that the distractor terminated them prematurely. In contrast, distractors appearing close to the saccade target elicited express saccade-like movements 70–100 ms after their appearance, although the saccade endpoint was generally scarcely affected by the distractor. An additional experiment showed that these effects were weaker when the saccade was made to a visible target in a delayed task and still weaker when the saccade itself was made in response to the abrupt appearance of a visual stimulus. A final experiment revealed that the effect is smaller, but quite evident, for very small stimuli. These results suggest that the transient component of a visual response can briefly but almost completely suppress a voluntary saccade command, but only when the stimulus evoking that response is distant from the saccade goal.
- Subjects :
- Adult
Male
medicine.medical_specialty
Time Factors
genetic structures
Physiology
media_common.quotation_subject
Sensory system
Stimulus (physiology)
Audiology
Discrimination Learning
Young Adult
Saccadic suppression of image displacement
Orientation
medicine
Reaction Time
Saccades
Contrast (vision)
Humans
Attention
Discrimination learning
Vision, Ocular
media_common
Probability
Communication
business.industry
General Neuroscience
Eye movement
Articles
Saccadic masking
Inhibition, Psychological
Saccade
Female
Visual Fields
business
Psychology
Photic Stimulation
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....4d72092c48ac2edbc4babdd55dfddd2f