Spatiotemporal Content of Saccade Transients.

Humans use rapid gaze shifts, known as saccades, to explore visual scenes. These movements yield abrupt luminance changes on the retina, which elicit robust neural discharges at fixation onsets. Yet little is known about the spatial content of saccade transients. Here, we show that saccades redistribute spatial information within the temporal range of retinal sensitivity following two distinct regimes: saccade modulations counterbalance (whiten) the spectral density of natural scenes at low spatial frequencies and follow the external power distribution at higher frequencies. This redistribution is a consequence of saccade dynamics, particularly the speed/amplitude/duration relation known as the main sequence. It resembles the redistribution resulting from inter-saccadic eye drifts, revealing a continuum in the modulations given by different eye movements, with oculomotor transitions primarily acting by regulating the bandwidth of whitening. Our findings suggest important computational roles for saccade transients in the establishment of spatial representations and lead to testable predictions about their consequences for visual functions and encoding mechanisms. • By formatting the input flow, saccades play an important computational role in vision • At low spatial frequencies, saccades discard redundant information in natural scenes • The bandwidth of this effect (whitening) increases as saccade amplitude decreases • The whitening bandwidth oscillates during the natural saccade/fixation cycle Humans use saccades (rapid gaze shifts) to explore visual scenes. Mostofi et al. show that these eye movements flexibly reformat the luminance flow on the retina in a way that selectively discards redundant information present in natural scenes. These results reveal a matching between saccade dynamics and the characteristics of the natural world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]