{
  "abstract": "Before each of around 200,000 eye movements we make each day, the brain decides how long to fixate before shifting gaze to new information. Here we investigate this process using a large-scale scene-viewing experiment (4,080 natural scenes, five participants) that combines magnetoencephalography, eye tracking and a semantic captioning task. Using multivariate analysis of magnetoencephalography source-space patterns, behavioral analyses and artificial neural network (ANN) modeling, we show that longer fixations do not reflect prolonged visual processing but relate to downstream memory encoding. First, temporal variability of ventral stream representational dynamics did not explain variability in fixation duration. Second, fixation durations were anticorrelated with ANN-estimated patch classification difficulty. Third, fixation durations correlate positively with ANN-predicted patch memorability and caption-inclusion and co-occur with increased theta-gamma phase-amplitude coupling, particularly in frontal and hippocampal regions. These results indicate that eye-movement timing decisions are shaped by memory-encoding demands rather than by perceptual processing limits.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [
    "Institute of Cognitive Science, Osnabrück University, Osnabrück, Germany. phsulewski@gmail.com",
    "Vision and Computational Cognition Group, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany. phsulewski@gmail.com",
    "Institute of Cognitive Science, Osnabrück University, Osnabrück, Germany",
    "Center for Mind, Brain and Behavior, Universities of Marburg, Giessen and Darmstadt, Marburg, Germany",
    "Department of Medicine, Justus Liebig University Giessen, Giessen, Germany",
    "Vision and Computational Cognition Group, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany",
    "Department of Neurophysiology and Pathophysiology, Center of Experimental Medicine, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany",
    "Institute of Cognitive Science, Osnabrück University, Osnabrück, Germany. tim.kietzmann@uni-osnabrueck.de"
  ],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 5,
  "authors": [
    {
      "affs": [
        0,
        1
      ],
      "name": "Philip Sulewski",
      "orcid": "0000-0001-5109-1609"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        2
      ],
      "name": "Carmen Amme",
      "orcid": "0009-0002-2103-3293"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        3,
        4,
        5
      ],
      "name": "Martin N. Hebart",
      "orcid": "0000-0001-7257-428X"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        6,
        2
      ],
      "name": "Peter König B",
      "orcid": "0000-0003-3654-5267"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        7
      ],
      "name": "Tim Christian Kietzmann",
      "orcid": "0000-0001-8076-6062"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/4z19vhzs38765.bib",
  "cited_by": 5,
  "doi": "10.1038/s41593-026-02285-1",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "4z19vhzs38765",
  "issns": [
    "1097-6256",
    "1546-1726"
  ],
  "landing_url": "https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-026-02285-1",
  "language": "en",
  "licence": "CC-BY",
  "licence_label": "CC BY",
  "licence_source": "journal",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": null,
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "openalex",
      "2805|Visual perception and processing mechanisms"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7162332816",
  "pdf_url": "https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-026-02285-1.pdf",
  "pmcid": "PMC13246442",
  "pmid": "42185573",
  "published": "2026-05-25",
  "publisher": "Nature Portfolio",
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/4z19vhzs38765.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-11-13T13:21:09Z",
      "native_id": "W7162332816",
      "source": "openalex",
      "url": "https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-026-02285-1"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "biology",
      "origin": "openalex:2805|Visual perception and processing mechanisms",
      "subfield": "neuroscience"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Fixation duration on natural scenes is explained by memory encoding not processing demand",
  "title_text": "Fixation duration on natural scenes is explained by memory encoding not processing demand",
  "type": "peer-reviewed",
  "updated_at": "2026-11-13T13:21:09Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/4z19vhzs38765",
  "venue": "Nature Neuroscience",
  "versions": []
}