Séminaire SCALab 14/03/2024

Anna Montagnini, Institut de Neurosciences de la Timone, AMU

Eye movements as dynamic readout of predictive and decision processes

Visually-guided orienting eye movements (saccades and smooth pursuit) are primarily
determined by the physical properties of the target stimuli. However, cognitive factors, such
as expectancy and motivation can significantly modulate this kind of eye movements. For
instance, past work in our group has highlighted a robust parametric relation between the
expected probability of visual motion direction and anticipatory smooth eye movements. I
will present recent extensions of the analysis of predictive eye movements across contexts
of increasing complexity. In addition, I will illustrate the dynamic relation between visually-
guided eye movements and visual perceptual decisions. In particular, I will describe the
recently identified dissociation between the oculomotor and the perceptual bias induced by
experience-based motion expectancy. Finally, I will discuss how these findings can be
conciliated (or not) with the theoretical framework of Bayesian inference for sensorimotor
integration and perception.