The inevitability of visual interruption

Abstract

For successful adaptive behavior, exogenous environmental events must be sensed and reacted to as efficiently as possible. In the lab, the mechanisms underlying such efficiency are often studied with eye movements. Using controlled trials, careful measures of eye movement reaction times, directions, and kinematics suggest a form of “exogenous” oculomotor capture by external events. However, even in controlled trials, exogenous onsets necessarily come asynchronously to internal brain state. We argue that variability in the effectiveness of “exogenous” capture is inevitable. We review an extensive set of evidence demonstrating that before orienting must come interruption, a process that partially explains such variability. More importantly, we present a novel neural mechanistic account of interruption, leveraging the presence of early sensory processing capabilities in the very final stages of oculomotor control brain circuitry.