Intrasaccadic motion: Neural evidence for saccadic suppression and postsaccadic enhancement

Abstract

Primates have relatively small foveas within their retinas. There are sufficient photoreceptors only in the fovea to allow high spatial resolution vision. Thus, to obtain high-resolution images in the entire visual field, there is a need to point the fovea at targets of interest, and this is achieved using saccadic eye movements. Humans make around three saccades per second. How is smooth, uninterrupted visual perception maintained in the face of the frequent image displacements generated by saccades? It has been known for many years that visual perception is modified before, during, and after saccades and, more recently, evidence has accumulated showing how neural activity is also modulated..