Perception-action Dissociations as a Window into Consciousness.

Understanding the neural correlates of unconscious perception stands as a primary goal of experimental research in cognitive psychology and neuroscience. In this Perspectives paper, we explain why experimental protocols probing qualitative dissociations between perception and action provide valuable insights into conscious and unconscious processing, along with their corresponding neural correlates. We present research that utilizes human eye movements as a sensitive indicator of unconscious visual processing.

Shared Mechanisms Drive Ocular Following and Motion Perception.

How features of complex visual patterns are combined to drive perception and eye movements is not well understood. Here we simultaneously assessed human observers' perceptual direction estimates and ocular following responses (OFR) evoked by moving plaids made from two summed gratings with varying contrast ratios. When the gratings were of equal contrast, observers' eye movements and perceptual reports followed the motion of the plaid pattern.

Smooth pursuit inhibition reveals audiovisual enhancement of fast movement control.

The sudden onset of a visual object or event elicits an inhibition of eye movements at latencies approaching the minimum delay of visuomotor conductance in the brain. Typically, information presented via multiple sensory modalities, such as sound and vision, evokes stronger and more robust responses than unisensory information. Whether and how multisensory information affects ultra-short latency oculomotor inhibition is unknown.

Eye movements in Parkinson's disease: from neurophysiological mechanisms to diagnostic tools.

Movement disorders such as Parkinson's disease (PD) impact oculomotor function - the ability to move the eyes accurately and purposefully to serve a multitude of sensory, cognitive, and secondary motor tasks. Decades of neurophysiological research in monkeys and behavioral studies in humans have characterized the neural basis of healthy oculomotor control. This review links eye movement abnormalities in persons living with PD to the underlying neurophysiological mechanisms and pathways.

Shared mechanisms drive ocular following and motion perception.

How features of complex visual patterns combine to drive perception and eye movements is not well understood. We simultaneously assessed human observers' perceptual direction estimates and ocular following responses (OFR) evoked by moving plaids made from two summed gratings with varying contrast ratios. When the gratings were of equal contrast, observers' eye movements and perceptual reports followed the motion of the plaid pattern.

Rapid Audiovisual Integration Guides Predictive Actions.

Natural movements, such as catching a ball or capturing prey, typically involve multiple senses. Yet, laboratory studies on human movements commonly focus solely on vision and ignore sound. Here, we ask how visual and auditory signals are integrated to guide interceptive movements.

Humans Can Track But Fail to Predict Accelerating Objects.

Objects in our visual environment often move unpredictably and can suddenly speed up or slow down. The ability to account for acceleration when interacting with moving objects can be critical for survival. Here, we investigate how human observers track an accelerating target with their eyes and predict its time of reappearance after a temporal occlusion by making an interceptive hand movement.

Eye movements during optic flow perception.

Optic flow is an important visual cue for human perception and locomotion and naturally triggers eye movements. Here we investigate whether the perception of optic flow direction is limited or enhanced by eye movements. In Exp.

Tracking and perceiving diverse motion signals: Directional biases in human smooth pursuit and perception.

Human smooth pursuit eye movements and motion perception behave similarly when observers track and judge the motion of simple objects, such as dots. But moving objects in our natural environment are complex and contain internal motion. We ask how pursuit and perception integrate the motion of objects with motion that is internal to the object.

Do pupillary responses during authentic slot machine use reflect arousal or screen luminance fluctuations? A proof-of-concept study.

Modern slot machines are among the more harmful forms of gambling. Psychophysiological measures may provide a window into mental processes that underpin these harms. Here we investigated pupil dilation derived from eye tracking as a means of capturing changes in sympathetic nervous system arousal following outcomes on a real slot machine.

Eye Movements as a Window into Decision-Making.

For over 100 years, eye movements have been studied and used as indicators of human sensory and cognitive functions. This review evaluates how eye movements contribute to our understanding of the processes that underlie decision-making. Eye movement metrics signify the visual and task contexts in which information is accumulated and weighed.

Eye-hand coordination during online reach corrections is task dependent.

To produce accurate movements, the human motor system needs to deal with errors that can occur due to inherent noise, changes in the body, or disturbances in the environment. Here, we investigated the temporal coupling of rapid corrections of the eye and hand in response to a change in visual target location during the movement. In addition to a "classic" double-step task in which the target stepped to a new position, participants performed a set of modified double-step tasks in which the change in movement goal was indicated by the appearance of an additional target, or by a spatial or symbolic cue.

Preservation of Eye Movements in Parkinson's Disease Is Stimulus- and Task-Specific.

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disease that includes motor impairments, such as tremor, bradykinesia, and postural instability. Although eye movement deficits are commonly found in saccade and pursuit tasks, preservation of oculomotor function has also been reported. Here we investigate specific task and stimulus conditions under which oculomotor function in PD is preserved.

Topical Review: Perceptual-cognitive Skills, Methods, and Skill-based Comparisons in Interceptive Sports.

We give a comprehensive picture of perceptual-cognitive (PC) skills that could contribute to performance in interceptive sports. Both visual skills that are low level and unlikely influenced by experience and higher-level cognitive-attentional skills are considered, informing practitioners for identification and training and alerting researchers to gaps in the literature.Perceptual-cognitive skills and abilities are keys to success in interceptive sports.

The role of eye movements in manual interception: A mini-review.

When we catch a moving object in mid-flight, our eyes and hands are directed toward the object. Yet, the functional role of eye movements in guiding interceptive hand movements is not yet well understood. This review synthesizes emergent views on the importance of eye movements during manual interception with an emphasis on laboratory studies published since 2015.

Look where you go: Characterizing eye movements toward optic flow.

When we move through our environment, objects in the visual scene create optic flow patterns on the retina. Even though optic flow is ubiquitous in everyday life, it is not well understood how our eyes naturally respond to it. In small groups of human and non-human primates, optic flow triggers intuitive, uninstructed eye movements to the focus of expansion of the pattern (Knöll, Pillow, & Huk, 2018).

Expectations about motion direction affect perception and anticipatory smooth pursuit differently.

Smooth pursuit eye movements and visual motion perception rely on the integration of current sensory signals with past experience. Experience shapes our expectation of current visual events and can drive eye movement responses made in anticipation of a target, such as anticipatory pursuit. Previous research revealed consistent effects of expectation on anticipatory pursuit-eye movements follow the expected target direction or speed-and contrasting effects on motion perception, but most studies considered either eye movement or perceptual responses.

Functional Use of Eye Movements for an Acting System.

Movements of the eyes assist vision and support hand and body movements in a cooperative way. Despite their strong functional coupling, different types of movements are usually studied independently. We integrate knowledge from behavioral, neurophysiological, and clinical studies on how eye movements are coordinated with goal-directed hand movements and how they facilitate motor learning.

Do eye movements enhance visual memory retrieval?

When remembering an object at a given location, participants tend to return their gaze to that location even after the object has disappeared, known as Looking-at-Nothing (LAN). However, it is unclear whether LAN is associated with better memory performance. Previous studies reporting beneficial effects of LAN have often not systematically manipulated or assessed eye movements.

Eye movements as a readout of sensorimotor decision processes.

Real-world tasks, such as avoiding obstacles, require a sequence of interdependent choices to reach accurate motor actions. Yet, most studies on primate decision making involve simple one-step choices. Here we analyze motor actions to investigate how sensorimotor decisions develop over time.

Introduction to special issue on "Prediction in Perception and Action".

The wide diversity of articles in this issue reveals an explosion of evidence for the mechanisms of prediction in the visual system. When thought of as visual priors, predictive mechanisms can be seen as tightly interwoven with incoming sensory data. Prediction is thus a fundamental and essential aspect not only of visual perception but of the actions that are guided by perception.

On the relation between anticipatory ocular torsion and anticipatory smooth pursuit.

Humans and other animals move their eyes in anticipation to compensate for sensorimotor delays. Such anticipatory eye movements can be driven by the expectation of a future visual object or event. Here we investigate whether such anticipatory responses extend to ocular torsion, the eyes' rotation about the line of sight.

Zoned in or zoned out? Investigating immersion in slot machine gambling using mobile eye-tracking.

Background And Aims: Immersion during slot machine gambling has been linked to disordered gambling. Current conceptualizations of immersion (namely dissociation, flow and the machine zone) make contrasting predictions as to whether gamblers are captivated by the game per se ('zoned in') or motivated by the escape that immersion provides ('zoned out'). We examined whether selected eye-movement metrics can distinguish between these predictions.

Ocular torsion is related to perceived motion-induced position shifts.

Ocular torsion (i.e., rotations of the eye about the line of sight) can be induced by visual rotational motion.