Human express saccades: extremely short reaction times of goal directed eye movements

Human subjects were asked to execute a saccade from a central fixation point to a peripheral target at the time of its onset. When the fixation point is turned off some time (approximately equal to 200 ms) before target onset, such that there is a gap where subjects see nothing, the distribution of their saccadic reaction times is bimodal with one narrow peak around 100 ms (express saccades) and another peak around 150 ms (regular saccades) measured from the onset of the target. Express saccades have been described earlier for the monkey.