Saccadic "inhibition" unveils the late influence of image content on oculomotor programming

Image content is prioritized in the visual system. Faces are a paradigmatic example, receiving preferential processing along the visual pathway compared to other visual stimuli. Moreover, face prioritization manifests also in behavior. People tend to look at faces more frequently and for longer periods, and saccadic reaction times can be faster when targeting a face as opposed to a phase-scrambled control. However, it is currently not clear at which stage image content affects oculomotor planning and execution. It can be hypothesized that image content directly influences oculomotor signal generation. Alternatively, the image content could exert its influence on oculomotor planning and execution at a later stage, after the image has been processed. Here we aim to disentangle these two alternative hypotheses by measuring the frequency of saccades toward a visual target when the latter is followed by a visual transient in the central visual field. Behaviorally, this paradigm leads to a reduction in saccade frequency that happens about 90 ms after any visual transient event, also known as saccadic "inhibition". In two experiments, we measured occurrence of saccades in visually guided saccades as well as microsaccades during fixation, using face and noise-matched visual stimuli. We observed that while the reduction in saccade occurrence was similar for both stimulus types, face stimuli lead to a prolonged reduction in eye movements. Moreover, saccade kinematics were altered by both stimulus types, showing an amplitude reduction without change in peak velocity for the earliest saccades. Taken together, our experiments imply that face stimuli primarily affect the later stages of the behavioral phenomenon of saccadic "inhibition". We propose that while some stimulus features are processed at an early stage and can quickly influence eye movements, a delayed signal conveying image content information is necessary to further inhibit/delay activity in the oculomotor system to trigger eye movements.