Microsaccades: a microcosm for research on oculomotor control, attention, and visual perception

Miniature eye movements occur involuntarily during visual fixation. The most prominent contribution to these fixational eye movements is generated by microsaccades, which are rapid small-amplitude saccades with a rate of about one per second. Recent work demonstrates that microsaccades are optimized to counteract perceptual fading during perception of a stationary scene. Furthermore, microsaccades are modulated by visual attention and turned out to generate rich spatio-temporal dynamics. We conclude that the investigation of microsaccades will evolve into a new research field contributing to many facets of oculomotor control, visual perception, and the allocation of attention.