Abstract
The oculomotor system keeps the eyes steady in expectation of visual events. Here, recording microsaccades while people performed a tactile, frequency discrimination task enabled us to test whether the oculomotor system shows an analogous preparatory response for unrelated tactile events. We manipulated the temporal predictability of tactile targets using tactile cues, which preceded the target by either constant (high predictability) or variable (low predictability) time intervals. We find that microsaccades are inhibited prior to tactile targets and more so for constant than variable intervals, revealing a tight crossmodal link between tactile temporal expectation and oculomotor action. These findings portray oculomotor freezing as a marker of crossmodal temporal expectation. Moreover, microsaccades occurring around the tactile target presentation are associated with reduced task performance, suggesting that oculomotor freezing mitigates potential detrimental, concomitant effects of microsaccades and revealing a crossmodal coupling between tactile perception and oculomotor action.
Highlights
The oculomotor system keeps the eyes steady in expectation of visual events
Single-cell recordings have shown that microsaccades suppress target-related neuronal activity in the superior colliculus[21] and middle temporal as well as ventral and lateral intraparietal areas[22]. Given that all these brain structures receive inputs from multiple senses[23,24,25,26], microsaccadic inhibition could help preserve processing resources that aid tactile perception
Microsaccades were recorded while people performed an unrelated tactile task, which enabled us to test whether the oculomotor system shows a preparatory response for tactile events by keeping the eyes steady
Summary
The oculomotor system keeps the eyes steady in expectation of visual events. Here, recording microsaccades while people performed a tactile, frequency discrimination task enabled us to test whether the oculomotor system shows an analogous preparatory response for unrelated tactile events. Saccadic suppression effects can lead to spatial and temporal distortions in the perception of visual stimuli presented around the onset of saccades[17,18] and microsaccades[19,20] Consistent with this visual account, microsaccades during target presentation are associated with impaired performance in a visual temporal expectation task[9]. Single-cell recordings have shown that microsaccades suppress target-related neuronal activity in the superior colliculus[21] and middle temporal as well as ventral and lateral intraparietal areas[22] Given that all these brain structures receive inputs from multiple senses[23,24,25,26], microsaccadic inhibition could help preserve processing resources that aid tactile perception. We compared microsaccade rates across regular and irregular conditions and tested their relation to performance in the tactile-discrimination task
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