Eye-hand coordination during target selection in a pop-out visual search

We examined the coordination of saccades and reaches in a visual search task in which monkeys were rewarded for reaching to an odd-colored target among distractors. Eye movements were unconstrained, and monkeys typically made one or more saccades before initiating a reach. Target selection for reaching and saccades was highly correlated with the hand and eyes landing near the same final stimulus both for correct reaches to the target and for incorrect reaches to a distractor. Incorrect reaches showed a bias in target selection: they were directed to the distractor in the same hemifield as the target more often than to other distractors. A similar bias was seen in target selection for the initial saccade in correct reaching trials with multiple saccades. We also examined the temporal coupling of saccades and reaches. In trials with a single saccade, a reaching movement was made after a fairly stereotyped delay. In multiple-saccade trials, a reach to the target could be initiated near or even before the onset of the final target-directed saccade. In these trials, the initial trajectory of the reach was often directed toward the fixated distractor before veering toward the target around the time of the final saccade. In virtually all cases, the eyes arrived at the target before the hand, and remained fixated until reach completion. Overall, these results are consistent with flexible temporal coupling of saccade and reach initiation, but fairly tight coupling of target selection for the two types of action.