Brief period of 'blindness' is essential for vision

Researchers further cement the evidence for the important role tiny eye movements play in our ability to see letters, numbers, and objects at a distance. Researchers Michele Rucci, Ph.D., professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, and Janis Intoy, Ph.D., a postdoctoral research associate in Rucci’s lab, published a paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and found that the very center of gaze undergoes drastic and rapid modulations every time we redirect our gaze, causing a brief loss of vision. During that saccades – rapid movement of the eye between fixation points – perception is suppressed and the visual system stabilizes perception. Future research will determine more about this phenomenon and how humans control eye movements to balance the saccadic suppression with the visual enhancement that follows.