Abstract

Saccadic eye movements change where we look more than 10,000 times every waking hour, allowing us to see every aspect of the visual scene at the highest resolution. During these gaze shifts the visual input is blurred and every object in the scene undergoes sudden displacements on the retina. I will present research investigating how the active visual system bridges the abrupt discontinuities accompanying saccades to shape a seamless perceptual experience of the visual world. Previous work from our group has emphasized the role of attention and memory in this process. Here, I will present a series of experiments that elucidates the role of intra-saccadic visual signals, which are not lost entirely on the visual system. Our results suggest that, rather than being a hindrance to vision, intra-saccadic vision might in fact contribute to perceptual continuity in the face of eye movements.