Sounds are remapped across saccades
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Updated: Nov 26, 2025

Investigating the Deployment of Visual Attention Before Accurate and Averaging Saccades via Eye Tracking and Assessment of Visual Sensitivity
Published on: March 18, 2019
Martin Szinte1, David Aagten-Murphy2, Donatas Jonikaitis3
1Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Institut de Neurosciences de la Timone, Aix-Marseille Université, UMR 7289, Marseille, France. martin.szinte@gmail.com.
Abstract:
To achieve visual space constancy, our brain remaps eye-centered projections of visual objects across saccades. Here, we measured saccade trajectory curvature following the presentation of visual, auditory, and audiovisual distractors in a double-step saccade task to investigate if this stability mechanism also accounts for localized sounds. We found that saccade trajectories systematically curved away from the position at which either a light or a sound was presented, suggesting that both modalities are represented in eye-centered oculomotor centers. Importantly, the same effect was observed when the distractor preceded the execution of the first saccade. These results suggest that oculomotor centers keep track of visual, auditory and audiovisual objects by remapping their eye-centered representations across saccades. Furthermore, they argue for the existence of a supra-modal map which keeps track of multi-sensory object locations across our movements to create an impression of space constancy.
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