How Saccade Intrusions Affect Subsequent Motor and Oculomotor Actions

In daily activities, there is a close spatial and temporal coupling between eye and hand movements that enables human beings to perform actions smoothly and accurately. If this coupling is disrupted by inadvertent saccade intrusions, subsequent motor actions suffer from delays, and lack of coordination. To examine how saccade intrusions affect subsequent voluntary actions, we used two tasks that require subjects to make motor/oculomotor actions in response to a visual cue. One was the memory guided saccade (MGS) task, and the other the hand reaction time (RT) task. The MGS task required subjects to initiate a voluntary saccade to a memorized target location, which is indicated shortly before by a briefly presented cue. The RT task required subjects to release a button on detection of a visual target, while foveating on a central fixation point. In normal subjects of various ages, inadvertent saccade intrusions delayed subsequent voluntary motor, and oculomotor actions. We also studied patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), who are impaired not only in initiating voluntary saccades but also in suppressing unwanted reflexive saccades. Saccade intrusions also delayed hand RT in PD patients. However, MGS was affected by the saccade intrusion differently. Saccade intrusion did not delay MGS latency in PD patients who could perform MGS with a relatively normal latency. In contrast, in PD patients who were unable to initiate MGS within the normal time range, we observed slightly decreased MGS latency after saccade intrusions. What explains this paradoxical phenomenon? It is known that motor actions slow down when switching between controlled and automatic behavior. We discuss how the effect of saccade intrusions on subsequent voluntary motor/oculomotor actions may reflect a similar switching cost between automatic and controlled behavior and a cost for switching between different motor effectors. In contrast, PD patients were unable to initiate internally guided MGS in the absence of visual target and could perform only automatic visually guided saccades, and did not have to switch between automatic and controlled behavior. This lack of switching may explain the shortening of MGS latency by the saccade intrusion in PD patients.