Abstract
A saccadic eye movement to a moving object requires taking both the object’s position and velocity into account. While recent studies have demonstrated that saccades can do this quite well for linear trajectories, its ability to do so for stimuli moving in more complex, yet predictable, trajectories is unknown. With objects moving in circular trajectories, we document failures of saccades not only to compensate for target motion, but even to saccade successfully to any location on the object trajectory. While maintaining central fixation, subjects viewed a target moving in a circular trajectory at an eccentricity of 6, 9, or 12 deg for 1-2 sec. The stimulus orbited fixation at a rate of 0.375, 0.75, or 1.5 revolutions/sec. The disappearance of the central fixation point cued the saccade. Quite unexpectedly, the circularly moving stimuli substantially compromised saccade generation. Compared with saccades to non-moving targets, saccades to circularly moving targets at all eccentricities had substantially lower amplitude gains, greater curvature, and longer reaction times. Gains decreased by 20% at 0.375 cycles/sec and more than 50% at 1.5 cycles/sec. Reaction times increased by over 100ms for 1.5 cycles/sec. In contrast, the relationship between peak velocity and amplitude was unchanged. Given the delayed nature of the saccade task, the system ought to have sufficient time to program a reasonable voluntary saccade to some particular location on the trajectory. But, the abnormal gain, curvature, and increased reaction time indicate that something else is going on. The successive visual transients along the target trajectory perhaps engage elements of the reflexive system continually, possibly engaging vector averaging processes and preventing anticipation. These results indicate that motor output can be inextricably bound to sensory input even during a highly voluntary motor act, and thus suggest that current understanding of reflexive vs. voluntary saccades is incomplete.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2012