Annegret Meermeier Institute of Psychology Fliednerstraße 21 D-48149 Münster Phone: +49 (0) 251/83 34178 Fax: +49 (0) 251/83 34173 E-mail: a_meer05@uni-muenster.de → Website

PhD in 2018

Research Project

Every day we make countless eye movements (saccades) to perceive our environment. Saccades are very brief, they only take some tens of milliseconds. The high velocity of these eye movements causes two very interesting features. First, in order to make us perceive a stable and clear environment the visual input is suppressed while the eyes are moving (Bridgeman et al., 1975). Second, saccades are too brief to be controlled via visual feedback, since it takes up to 30ms for the visual signal to leave the retina alone (Lee et al., 1994). Hence saccades are planned before they are executed.
If the target of a saccade is stepped while the eyes are in flight, the induced error becomes available to the system only after the saccade is finished. The dissociation between expected and actual saccade landing position will modulate the planning of the next saccade, such that saccadic accuracy can be maintained. Within several tens of repetitions the saccade will be longer or shorter, aiming for the new target. This adjustment of saccades is called saccadic adaptation (McLaughlin, 1967).
My research interest focuses on saccadic adaptation processes and their implications. What can be perceived, before and after the eye movement during adaptation? Does perception impact the motor learning process of saccadic adaptation? And does saccadic adaptation itself have an impact on other visual disciplines?

PhD Committee

Prof. Dr. Markus Lappe
Prof. Dr. med. Rebekka Lencer
Dr. Svenja Gremmler

Publications

Meermeier A, Gremmler S, Lappe M (2016) The influence of image content on oculomotor plasticity. J Vis 16:17. doi:10.1167/16.8.17.

Conference Contributions

Meermeier, A., Havermann, K., Lappe, M. (2012), Visual search with covert adapted saccades. Poster presentation at the European Conference on Visual Perception (ECVP), Alghero, Italy.

Meermeier, A., Gremmler, S., Lappe, M. (2015), Meaningul images induce stronger saccadic adaptation. Poster presentation at the 15th Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society (VSS), St. Petersburg, Florida, USA.

CV