Microsaccadic eye movement generation is sufficient to enhance peripheral visual sensitivity
- 1Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
- 2Werner Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
Abstract
Microsaccades have been convincingly linked to extrafoveal covert attention shifts for more than two decades. However, the direction of causality between individual microsaccade generation and an alteration in both extrafoveal visual sensitivity and behavior remains debated: do microsaccades merely reflect, perhaps probabilistically, an altered extrafoveal sensitivity, or is the act of generating microsaccades sufficient, on its own, to modify such sensitivity? Using a novel exploitation of real-time retinal image stabilization, behavior, and neurophysiology in the superior colliculus of rhesus macaque monkeys, we show that exclusive experimental control over foveal oculomotor state is entirely sufficient to influence extrafoveal sensitivity. This happens for eccentricities as large as ~50 times those associated with microsaccades, and it also takes place in the absence of any differential attentional demands. Most importantly, such influence is mediated through well-known, classic pre- and post-saccadic visual processing changes. These results were also confirmed, and extended to larger saccades, using human psychophysical experiments. Thus, seemingly-innocuous subliminal eye movements do constitute an integral component of cognitive processes like attention.
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BibTeX
@article{zhang2026microsaccadic,
title = {{Microsaccadic eye movement generation is sufficient to enhance peripheral visual sensitivity}},
author = {Tong Zhang and Xiaoguang Tian and Tatiana Malevich and Matthias Philipp Baumann and Ziad M. Hafed},
journal = {PLoS Biology},
year = {2026},
month = aug,
doi = {10.1371/journal.pbio.3003968},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003968},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Microsaccadic eye movement generation is sufficient to enhance peripheral visual sensitivity
AU - Tong Zhang
AU - Xiaoguang Tian
AU - Tatiana Malevich
AU - Matthias Philipp Baumann
AU - Ziad M. Hafed
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/08/21
JO - PLoS Biology
DO - 10.1371/journal.pbio.3003968
UR - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003968
AB - Microsaccades have been convincingly linked to extrafoveal covert attention shifts for more than two decades. However, the direction of causality between individual microsaccade generation and an alteration in both extrafoveal visual sensitivity and behavior remains debated: do microsaccades merely reflect, perhaps probabilistically, an altered extrafoveal sensitivity, or is the act of generating microsaccades sufficient, on its own, to modify such sensitivity? Using a novel exploitation of real-time retinal image stabilization, behavior, and neurophysiology in the superior colliculus of rhesus macaque monkeys, we show that exclusive experimental control over foveal oculomotor state is entirely sufficient to influence extrafoveal sensitivity. This happens for eccentricities as large as ~50 times those associated with microsaccades, and it also takes place in the absence of any differential attentional demands. Most importantly, such influence is mediated through well-known, classic pre- and post-saccadic visual processing changes. These results were also confirmed, and extended to larger saccades, using human psychophysical experiments. Thus, seemingly-innocuous subliminal eye movements do constitute an integral component of cognitive processes like attention.
SN - 1544-9173
SN - 1545-7885
ER -