title: Visibility states modulate microsaccade rate and direction.
abstract: We investigated how the perceptual visibility of a target influences the pattern of microsaccadic eye movements expressed during generalized flash suppression. We found that the microsaccade rate was highly dependent on the reported visibility of the target. In the visible trials, the microsaccade rate promptly rebounded to the pre-onset level, whereas on the invisible trials the rate remained low, reaching pre-onset levels hundreds of milliseconds later. In addition, the directional distributions of microsaccades were biased to the target positions in the visible condition. The present findings indicate that the microsaccade behavior is highly correlated with the perceptual state of target visibility, and suggest that the measured microsaccade rate and direction are reliable indicators of the perception.
authors.affiliation: School of Health Information Science, University of Texas at Houston, Houston, TX 77030, USA.
authors.forename: Jie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Cui
authors.forename: Melanie
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Wilke
authors.forename: Nikos K
authors.initials: NK
authors.lastname: Logothetis
authors.forename: David A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Leopold
authors.forename: Hualou
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Liang
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D005364:Field Dependence-Independence; D005403:Fixation, Ocular / Q000502:physiology; D008253:Macaca mulatta; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D011601:Psychophysics; D012438:Saccades / Q000502:physiology*; D015349:Vision, Monocular / Q000502:physiology