Intra-saccadic motion streaks jump-start gaze correction

Abstract

Rapid eye movements (saccades) incessantly shift objects across the retina. To establish object correspondence, the visual system is thought to match surface features of objects across saccades. Here we show that an objects intra-saccadic retinal trace - a signal previously considered unavailable to visual processing - facilitates this match-making. Human observers made saccades to a cued target in a circular stimulus array. Using high-speed visual projection, we swiftly rotated this array during the eyes flight, displaying continuous intra-saccadic target motion. Observers saccades landed between the target and a distractor, prompting secondary saccades. Independently of the availability of object features, which we controlled tightly, target motion increased the rate and reduced the latency of gaze-correcting saccades to the initial pre-saccadic target, in particular when the targets stimulus features incidentally gave rise to efficient motion streaks. These results suggest that intra-saccadic visual information informs the establishment of object correspondence and jump-starts gaze correction.