Saccadic adaptation without retinal postsaccadic error

Abstract

Primary saccades undershoot their target. Corrective saccades are then triggered by retinal postsaccadic information. We tested whether primary saccades still undershoot when no postsaccadic visual information is available. Participants saccaded to five targets (10-34 degrees) that were either constantly illuminated (ON) or extinguished at saccade onset (OFF(Onset)). In OFF(Onset), few corrective saccades were observed. The saccadic gain increased over trials for the furthest (34 degrees) target. Terminal eye position after glissades or microsaccades progressively converged to the values observed in ON (targets over 16 degrees). Target extinction during the saccade only did not elicit any change. The results show that (i) postsaccadic retinal signals stabilize the saccadic gain and (ii) adaptive changes that reduce terminal error can take place without visual information.