A BOLD (blood Oxygen Level-dependent) View Of Saccadic Suppression

Main Category: Neurology / Neuroscience
Article Date: 31 May 2006 - 0:00 PDT

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Fortunately, the visual system doesn't deliver a high-resolution image during saccadic eye movements; otherwise, life would consist of an endless train of blurry images each time we moved or the world around us moved. This visual suppression process must involve cortical areas because it precedes movement.

This week, Vallines and Greenlee propose primary visual cortex (V1) as a site of saccadic suppression. They measured BOLD (blood oxygen level-dependent) responses to Gabor patches: blurred images of contrasting lines. The authors first mapped the location encoding the stimulus in V1.

The four subjects were then presented with the stimuli for 8 ms before the eye made a saccade to a visual target. Although the stimulus was always presented to a stationary retina, discrimination was degraded and V1 responses were smaller the closer the stimulus was presented to a saccade, consistent with involvement of V1 in saccadic suppression.

Ignacio Vallines and Mark W. Greenlee

racey Somers
tsomers@sfn.org
Society for Neuroscience
http://www.sfn.org