Sequential hemifield gating of alpha and beta behavioral performance oscillations after microsaccades

Microsaccades are tiny saccades that occur during gaze fixation. Even though visual processing has been shown to be strongly modulated close to the time of microsaccades, both at central and peripheral eccentricities, it is not clear how these eye movements might influence longer-term fluctuations in brain activity and behavior. Here we found that visual processing is significantly affected, and in a rhythmic manner, even several hundreds of milliseconds after a microsaccade. Human visual detection efficiency, as measured by reaction time, exhibited coherent rhythmic oscillations in the α and β frequency bands for up to ~650-700 ms after a microsaccade. Surprisingly, the oscillations were sequentially pulsed across visual hemifields relative to microsaccade direction, first occurring in the same hemifield as the movement vector for ~400 ms and then the opposite. Such pulsing also affected perceptual detection performance. Our results suggest that visual processing is subject to long-lasting oscillations that are phase-locked to microsaccade generation, and that these oscillations are dependent on microsaccade direction.

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