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Less attention is more in the preparation of antisaccades, but not prosaccades

Nature Neuroscience volume 4, pages 1037–1042 (2001)Cite this article

Abstract

To make a saccadic eye movement to a target we must first attend to it. It is therefore not surprising that diverting attention increases saccade latency, but is latency increased in all cases? We show that attending to a peripheral discrimination task has a paradoxical effect. If the stimulus to be attended appears shortly (100 to 300 ms) before an eye movement is made in a direction opposite to that of a presented stimulus (an antisaccade), its latency is reduced to well below baseline performance. In contrast, latencies for saccades toward the stimulus (prosaccades) are increased under similar conditions. This paradoxical effect may arise from competition between the processes mediating prosaccades and antisaccades. When the discrimination task is presented at the critical moment, it interferes with a reflexive prosaccade, allowing faster antisaccades. The results suggest that the suppression of sensorimotor reflexes can facilitate volitional motor acts.

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Figure 1: Stimuli and results for experiment 1.
Figure 2: Stimuli and results for experiment 2.
Figure 3: Stimuli and results for experiment 3.
Figure 4: The results from experiment 4.
Figure 5: A proposal for a functional explanation of the results.

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Acknowledgements

The research was supported by a Fulbright graduate award and a Thor Thors graduate award to A.K., an NIH grant to Y.C. and an AFOSR grant to K.N. We thank J. Edelman, C. Stromeyer and P. Cavanagh for comments.

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  1. Vision Sciences Laboratory, Harvard University, 33 Kirkland Street, Cambridge, 02138, Massachusetts, USA

    Árni Kristjánsson, Yue Chen & Ken Nakayama

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Correspondence to Árni Kristjánsson.

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Kristjánsson, Á., Chen, Y. & Nakayama, K. Less attention is more in the preparation of antisaccades, but not prosaccades. Nat Neurosci 4, 1037–1042 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn723

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