Saccadic suppression: from Zebrafish to Primates

01/01/2024 to 01/01/2027

Active sensing is the mode of operation for most behaving organisms. While there are a multitude of computational advantages to active sensing, moving the sensor, such as the eyes, invariably introduces complexities in the processing of input sensory streams. Here, we study the robust phenomenon that visual processing is strongly altered around the time of rapid saccades.
During “saccadic suppression”, detection thresholds for brief visual stimulus presentations are dramatically elevated, and during “saccadic remapping”, receptive fields briefly change despite their principal retinotopy. Although saccadic suppression and remapping are robust phenomena, countless debates have emerged, and remain, about their mechanisms and origins. Our goal in the proposed research is to approach saccadic suppression and remapping from the perspective of evolutionary convergence and optimization, and we will do so by studying two organisms at two opposite ends of the evolutionary spectrum: zebrafish and non-human primates. We focus on the optic tectum (OT) in fish and the homologous superior colliculus (SC) in monkeys.