
Saccadic eye movements are the visual system’s camerawork that allow exploration of the fine details of a visual scene. Maintaining their accuracy throughout developmental or pathological modifications is thus of primary importance for our ability to see. This project aims to further our understanding of behavioral plasticity in the visuo-motor system by investigating the dynamics of saccadic adaptation. We will use novel, sensitive methods and analyses to investigate the spatiotemporal evolution of characteristics of saccadic adaptation in healthy adult participants. Our project has three major goals. The first is to establish the temporal profile of saccadic adaptation. Adaptation has been reported to occur on very short time-scales, such as single trials, but also longer time-scales up to several days. We aim to uncover the temporal resolution of adaptive amplitude changes by answering several questions: Does adaptation occur on every trial? What is the sensitivity of the system on such a short time-scale? Our second goal is to examine the spatial profile of saccadic adaptation. Saccadic adaptation has been reported to be a local phenomenon, selective for particular saccade metrics, but has also been shown to occur globally over all metrics. We hope to rec-oncile these two views. Finally, we aim to investigate the interplay between saccadic adaptation and visual perception. Perceptual sensitivity to the saccade errors that cause adaptation may influence how adaptation unfolds. Adaptation has also been shown to occur concurrently with perceptual modifications, and we plan to apply the methods used to determine the temporal resolution of adaptation to compare time courses of motor and perceptual changes. These goals will allow us to map out the sensitivity of the visuo-motor system to environmental changes.