Fixational saccades reflect volitional action preparation

Human volitional actions are preceded by preparatory processes, a critical mental process of cognitive control for future behavior. Volitional action preparation is regulated by large-scale neural circuits including the cerebral cortex and the basal ganglia. Because volitional action preparation is a covert process, the network dynamics of such neural circuits have been examined by neuroimaging and recording event-related potentials. Here, we examined whether such covert processes can be measured by the overt responses of fixational saccades (including microsaccades), the largest miniature eye movements that occur during eye fixation. We analyzed fixational saccades while adult humans maintained fixation on a central visual stimulus as they prepared to generate a volitional saccade in response to peripheral stimulus appearance. We used the antisaccade paradigm, in which subjects generate a saccade toward the opposite direction of a peripheral stimulus. Appropriate antisaccade performance requires the following two aspects of volitional control: 1) facilitation of saccades away from the stimulus and 2) suppression of inappropriate saccades toward the stimulus. We found that fixational saccades that occurred before stimulus appearance reflected the dual preparatory states of saccade facilitation and suppression and correlated with behavioral outcome (i.e., whether subjects succeeded or failed to cancel inappropriate saccades toward the stimulus). Moreover, fixational saccades explained a large proportion of individual differences in behavioral performance (poor/excellent) across subjects. These results suggest that fixational saccades predict the outcome of future volitional actions and may be used as a potential biomarker to detect people with difficulties in volitional action preparation.