Nature Neuroscience7, 65 - 69 (2003)
Published online: 7 December 2003; | doi:10.1038/nn1163
Saccades actively maintain perceptual continuity
John Ross1
& Anna Ma-Wyatt1, 2
1
School of Psychology, University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, Western Australia 6009, Australia.
2
The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute, 2318 Fillmore Street, San Francisco, California 94115, USA.
Correspondence should be addressed to Anna Ma-Wyatt anna@ski.org
People make saccades—rapid eye movements to a new fixation—approximately three times per second. This would seemingly disrupt perceptual continuity, yet our brains construct a coherent, stable view of the world from these successive fixations. There is conflicting evidence regarding the effects of saccades on perceptual continuity: some studies report that they are disruptive, with little information carryover between saccades; others report that carryover is substantial. Here we show that saccades actively contribute to perceptual continuity in humans in two different ways. When bistable stimuli are presented intermittently, saccades executed during the blank interval shorten the duration of states of ambiguous figures, indicating that saccades can erase immediately past perceptual states. On the other hand, they prolong the McCollough effect, indicating that saccades strengthen learned contingencies. Our results indicate that saccades help, rather than hinder, perceptual continuity.
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