Trans-retinal predictive signals of visual features are precise, saccade-specific and operate over a wide range of spatial frequencies

Saccadic eye movements successively project the saccade target on two retinal locations: a peripheral one before the saccade, and the fovea after the saccade. Typically, performance in discriminating stimulus features changes between these two projections is very poor. However, a short (∼200 ms) blanking of the target upon saccade onset drastically improves performance, demonstrating that a precise signal of the peripheral projection is retained during the saccade. Although little is known about the nature of that transsaccadic signal, previous reports conjectured that it relies on information processed by the magnocellular system. Across two experiments, we investigated the feature blanking effect for a wide range of spatial frequencies (0.5-8 cycles per degree of visual angle, dva), stimulus sizes (1-4 dva), and eccentricities (6-10 dva). In each trial, participants executed a saccade to a high-contrast grating presented either left or right of fixation. During the saccade, the grating changed orientation (clockwise or counter-clockwise) either instantaneously or after a 200-ms blank, and participants reported the change's direction. We contrasted this saccade condition with a trans-retinal fixation condition mimicking the peripheral-then-foveal sequence of the target stimulus occurring across a saccade. Remarkably, blanking improved performance reliably for each spatial frequency, stimulus size, and eccentricity, but only in the saccade condition. Performance with blanking in saccade trials systematically exceeded performance in the fixation condition. Our results demonstrate a robust feature blanking effect across saccades, suggesting that transsaccadic processes involve low-level visual features beyond those processed in the magnocellular system.<b>NEW & NOTEWORTHY</b> Across a saccadic eye movement, the visual system is able to keep track of the signals carrying the visual features of a saccade target. We provide evidence that these signals are sensitive to a wide range of stimulus sizes, can use a wide range spatial frequencies channels and, operate at various saccade amplitudes. Our results suggest an underlying mechanism operating beyond the magnocellular pathway that is contingent to saccade execution.