Saccadic Suppression

By Luca Fitzgerald

Posted May 3, 2021

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Transcript

Here’s a fun demonstration you can do at home. Look in the mirror, and shift your focus from one eye to the other. Can you see your eyes move? No, you can’t; it’s as if they don’t move at all. Then have someone face you and shift their focus from one of your eyes to the other. You can see their eyes move, so why can’t you see your own eyes move? You’re not the first person to wonder about that; it could be that people have pondered that as long as there have been mirrors.

So, in the mid-1970s scientists did a study to answer this question. Rapid eye movements are called saccades, and scientists studying them found that our vision is suppressed right before, and during each saccade. It’s called saccadic suppression. The researchers explained that by suppressing our vision whenever our eyes shift rapidly from one point to the next, our brain creates perceptual stability. Otherwise the world around us would seem to move every time we moved our eyes. That would be disorienting to say the least.

Reflection

Saccadic suppression helps provide image stability in our brains. (Dean Shareski/flickr)

Here’s a fun demonstration you can do at home. Look in the mirror, and shift your focus from one eye to the other. Can you see your eyes move? No, you can’t; it’s as if they don’t move at all. Then have someone face you and shift their focus from one of your eyes to the other. You can see their eyes move, so why can’t you see your own eyes move? You’re not the first person to wonder about that; it could be that people have pondered that as long as there have been mirrors.

So, in the mid-1970s scientists did a study to answer this question. Rapid eye movements are called saccades, and scientists studying them found that our vision is suppressed right before, and during each saccade. It’s called saccadic suppression. The researchers explained that by suppressing our vision whenever our eyes shift rapidly from one point to the next, our brain creates perceptual stability. Otherwise the world around us would seem to move every time we moved our eyes.

That would be disorienting to say the least.

Reviewer: Nicholas Port, Indiana University

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Sources

Bridgeman, Bruce, et al. “Failure to Detect Displacement of the Visual World during Saccadic Eye Movements.” Vision Research, vol. 15, no. 6, 1975, pp. 719–722., doi:10.1016/0042-6989(75)90290-4.
Wikipedia - Saccadic Suppression of Image Displacement
Cognitive Science - Can You See While Your Eyes Move?
Current Biology - Saccadic Suppression

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