Visual Stability During Saccades is Achieved through Transient Changes in Perceptual Space and Time

To interact rapidly and effectively with our environment, our brain needs access to a dynamic neural representation – or map – of the spatial layout of the external world. One of the major challenges to constructing such a map is the frequent rapid movements of the eyes, which displace the images on our retinae, up to three times per second. Much neurophysiological research shows that just before saccades, the receptive fields of neurons in many visual areas are subject to large shifts, in the direction of the saccade (Duhamel, Colby, & Goldberg, 1992). While the neural mechanisms of this dynamic process are now well understood ( Sommer & Wurtz, 2006), it is less clear how a shift in the direction of the saccade benefits perception.