Abstract

Saccadic eye movements create (at least) two related but distinct problems for the visual system: they cause rapid image motion and a displacement of the retinal image. Although it is often assumed that the motion is too fast to be resolved, this is certainly not the case for low-spatial-frequency images. Recent experiments have suggested that the reason we are unaware of the motion during saccades is because motion channels are selectively suppressed, possibly by suppression of the magno-cellular (but not the parvocellular) pathway. This suppression may explain why there is no sensation of motion during saccades, but it leaves open the problem of perceiving a stable world despite continual image displacements