Fine-scale measurement of the blind spot borders.

The blind spot is both a necessity and a nuisance for seeing. It is the portion of the visual field projecting to where the optic nerve crosses the retina, a region devoid of photoreceptors and hence visual input. The precise way in which vision transitions into blindness at the blind spot border is to date unknown.

Volitional control of saccadic adaptation.

Saccadic adaptation is assumed to be driven by an unconscious and automatic mechanism. We wondered if the adaptation process is accessible to volitional control, specifically whether any change in saccade gain can be inhibited. Participants were exposed to post-saccadic error by using the double-step paradigm in which a target is presented in a peripheral location and then stepped during the saccade to another location.

The reward of seeing: Different types of visual reward and their ability to modify oculomotor learning.

Saccadic adaptation is an oculomotor learning process that maintains the accuracy of eye movements to ensure effective perception of the environment. Although saccadic adaptation is commonly considered an automatic and low-level motor calibration in the cerebellum, we recently found that strength of adaptation is influenced by the visual content of the target: pictures of humans produced stronger adaptation than noise stimuli. This suggests that meaningful images may be considered rewarding or valuable in oculomotor learning.

New is always better: Novelty modulates oculomotor learning.

Saccadic adaptation aims at keeping saccades accurate to enable precise foveation of objects. It has been believed to be a rather low-level adjustment, responding chiefly to direction and magnitude of postsaccadic position error. However, recent studies have shown that image content can modify saccadic adaptation.

Instability of visual error processing for sensorimotor adaptation in schizophrenia.

Saccadic adaptation can be used to study disturbances of sensory processing and motor learning. We investigated whether patients with schizophrenia can adjust saccadic amplitudes to account for an increase in visual error while the saccade is in flight, and whether they transfer this change to a visuo-manual localization task. Fourteen patients (mean 37.

The influence of image content on oculomotor plasticity.

When we observe a scene, we shift our gaze to different points of interest via saccadic eye movements. Saccades provide high resolution views of objects and are essential for vision. The successful view of an interesting target might constitute a rewarding experience to the oculomotor system.