Sustained spatial attention accounts for the direction bias of human microsaccades.

ABSTRACT: Small ballistic eye movements, so called microsaccades, occur even while foveating an object. Previous studies using covert attention tasks have shown that shortly after a symbolic spatial cue, specifying a behaviorally relevant location, microsaccades tend to be directed toward the cued location. This suggests that microsaccades can serve as an index for the covert orientation of spatial attention. However, this hypothesis faces two major challenges: First, effects associated with visual spatial attention are hard to distinguish from those that associated with the contemplation of foveating a peripheral stimulus. Second, it is less clear whether endogenously sustained attention alone can bias microsaccade directions without a spatial cue on each trial. To address the first issue, we inves

SUBMITTER: Xue C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7692503 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature