BarajasCaldwell

Introduction

Our eyes are constantly moving, even when observing a stationary object. In fact, there are two distinct types of movements: larger, sporadic scanning, called saccades; and much smaller, high frequency movements called ocular drift. Past experiments have suggested that saccades are responsible for preventing image fading on our retina— that these movements "refresh" our visual system so that we have continual neural responses to static scenes. This result has largely satisfied inquiries of the purpose of eye movements for the visual system, and many in the scientific community assume both types of eye movements serve the single purpose of preventing fading. However, Michele Rucci and Jonothan D. Victor argue that this is an oversimplification and that in particular, ocular drift serves the more profound role of amplifying higher spatial frequencies on the retina to improve visual resolution. Our work throughout this project centers on assessing this hypothesis.