We participated in this year’s annual VSS meeting in Florida.
We presented intriguing results exploring mechanisms of saccadic suppression. In this phenomenon, visual sensitivity to brief flashes is dramatically reduced if the flashes happen to occur in the temporal vicinity of a rapid eye movement that we make. However, rapid eye movements move images impinging on our retina, and should stimulate the retina rather than suppress its sensitivity. We found that there is an interaction between the retinal response to flashes and the retinal response to image motions caused by saccades. This interaction allowed us to make interesting predictions about the properties of saccadic suppression when we make eye movements across patterned images, similar to what would happen if we make eye movements when viewing natural scenes in real life.
These results are allowing us to think about saccadic suppression from a novel perspective that we believe can help clarify the mechanisms with which visual perception can feel so seamless even though rapid eye movements keep shifting the retinal image.