Learning to silence saccadic suppression.

Autor:	Scholes C; Visual Neuroscience Group, School of Psychology, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, United Kingdom chris.scholes@nottingham.ac.uk neil.roach@nottingham.ac.uk., McGraw PV; Visual Neuroscience Group, School of Psychology, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, United Kingdom., Roach NW; Visual Neuroscience Group, School of Psychology, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, United Kingdom chris.scholes@nottingham.ac.uk neil.roach@nottingham.ac.uk.
Jazyk:	angličtina
Zdroj:	Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America [Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A] 2021 Feb 09; Vol. 118 (6).
DOI:	10.1073/pnas.2012937118
Abstrakt:	Perceptual stability is facilitated by a decrease in visual sensitivity during rapid eye movements, called saccadic suppression. While a large body of evidence demonstrates that saccadic programming is plastic, little is known about whether the perceptual consequences of saccades can be modified. Here, we demonstrate that saccadic suppression is attenuated during learning on a standard visual detection-in-noise task, to the point that it is effectively silenced. Across a period of 7 days, 44 participants were trained to detect brief, low-contrast stimuli embedded within dynamic noise, while eye position was tracked. Although instructed to fixate, participants regularly made small fixational saccades. Data were accumulated over a large number of trials, allowing us to assess changes in performance as a function of the temporal proximity of stimuli and saccades. This analysis revealed that improvements in sensitivity over the training period were accompanied by a systematic change in the impact of saccades on performance-robust saccadic suppression on day 1 declined gradually over subsequent days until its magnitude became indistinguishable from zero. This silencing of suppression was not explained by learning-related changes in saccade characteristics and generalized to an untrained retinal location and stimulus orientation. Suppression was restored when learned stimulus timing was perturbed, consistent with the operation of a mechanism that temporarily reduces or eliminates saccadic suppression, but only when it is behaviorally advantageous to do so. Our results indicate that learning can circumvent saccadic suppression to improve performance, without compromising its functional benefits in other viewing contexts. Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing interest. (Copyright © 2021 the Author(s). Published by PNAS.)
Databáze:	MEDLINE
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