Pre- and post-saccadic stimulus timing in saccadic suppression of displacement – A computational model

Abstract

When the target of a saccadic eye movement is displaced while the eyes move this displacement is often not noticed (saccadic suppression of displacement, SSD). We present a neurobiologically motivated, computational model of SSD and compare its simulation results to experimental data. The model offers a simple explanation of the effects of pre- and post-saccadic stimulus blanking on SSD in terms of peri-saccadic network dynamics. Under normal peri-saccadic conditions pre-and post-saccadic stimulus traces are recurrently integrated with reference to present and future eye position, whereas blanking diminishes the pre-saccadic stimulus trace and thus leads to an uninfluenced integration of the post-saccadic stimulus trace. We show that part of the intersubject variability in SSD can be explained by differences in decision thresholds of this integration process.