Extraction of saccades from eye movements triggered by reflex blinks

Abstract

AbstractThe trigeminal blink reflex can be evoked by delivering an air puff to the eye. If timed appropriately, e.g., during motor preparation, the small, loopy blink-related eye movement (BREM) associated with eyelid closure disinhibits the saccadic system and reduces the reaction time of planned eye movements. The BREM and intended eye movement overlap temporally, thus a mathematical formulation is required to objectively extract saccade features – onset time and velocity profile – from the combined movement. While it has been assumed that the interactions are nonlinear, we show that blink-triggered movements can be modeled as a linear combination of a typical BREM and a normal saccade, crucially, with an imposed delay between the two components. Saccades reconstructed with this approach are largely similar to control movements in their temporal and spatial profiles. Furthermore, activity profiles of saccade-related bursts in superior colliculus neurons for the recovered saccades closely match those for normal saccades. Thus, blink perturbations, if properly accounted for, offer a non-invasive tool to probe the behavioral and neural signatures of sensory-to-motor transformations.New and noteworthyThe trigeminal blink reflex is a brief noninvasive perturbation that disinhibits the saccadic system and provides a behavioral readout of the latent motor preparation process. The saccade, however, is combined with a loopy blink related eye movement. Here, we provide a mathematical formulation to extract the saccade from the combined movement. Thus, blink perturbations, when properly accounted for, offer a non-invasive tool to probe the behavioral and neural signatures of sensory-to-motor transformations.