Our research
Role and genesis of fixational eye movements
Microsaccades are extremely small versions of the saccadic eye movements that we employ in everyday life, but they never displace retinal images of the objects we are looking at away from the fovea. Slow ocular drifts are even smaller smooth rotations of the eyeball during fixation. We use a variety of techniques to explore brain control over microsaccades and slow ocular drifts, as well as to understand when/why these movements are triggered.
Perception and eye movements
High-resolution vision in humans is only limited to a small area of the visual field. Despite this, humans have the perception of a vivid, clear scene throughout the visual field, and this is because humans are active observers. One of our goals is to understand how eye movements support such clear, stable percepts.
visual attention and eye movements
Related to the interplay between perception and eye movements is an equally important interaction between attention/decision making/target selection on the one hand and eye movements on the other. Our lab investigates the neural mechanisms that underlie such interaction.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Willeke, K. F.*, Tian, X.*, Buonocore, A.*, Bellet, J., Ramirez-Cardenas, A. & Hafed, Z. M. (2019). Memory-guided microsaccades. Nature Communications, 10: 3710, doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-11711-x. Chen, C. -Y., Hoffmann, K.-P., Distler, C., & Hafed, Z. M. (2019). The foveal visual representation of the primate superior colliculus. Current Biology, 29: 2109-2119, doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2019.05.040. Chen, C. -Y., Sonnenberg, L., Weller, S., Witschel, T., & Hafed, Z. M. (2018). Spatial frequency sensitivity in macaque midbrain. Nature Communications, 9: 2852, doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-05302-5. Hafed, Z. M. & Chen, C. -Y. (2016). Sharper, stronger, faster upper visual field representation in primate superior colliculus. Current Biology, Vol. 26, pp. 1647-1658. Hafed, Z. M., Chen, C. -Y., & Tian, X. (2015). Vision, perception, and attention through the lens of microsaccades: mechanisms and implications. Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience (Special Research Topic on Perisaccadic Vision), 9:167. doi: 10.3389/fnsys.2015.00167 Chen, C. -Y., Ignashchenkova, A., Thier, P., & Hafed, Z. M. (2015). Neuronal response gain enhancement prior to microsaccades. Current Biology, Vol. 25, pp. 2065-2074. Hafed, Z. M. (2013). Alteration of visual perception prior to microsaccades. Neuron, Vol. 77, pp. 775-786. Hafed, Z. M., Goffart, L., & Krauzlis, R. J. (2009). A neural mechanism for microsaccade generation in the primate superior colliculus. Science, Vol. 323, No. 5916, pp. 940-943. Hafed, Z. M. & Krauzlis, R. J. (2006). Ongoing eye movements constrain visual perception. Nature Neuroscience, Vol. 9, No. 11, pp. 1449-1457. Hafed, Z. M. & Clark, J. J. (2002). Microsaccades as an overt measure of covert attention shifts. Vision Research, Vol. 42, No. 22, pp. 2533-2545.
our team
Prof. Dr. Ziad Hafed
Tatiana Malevich
Matthias P. Baumann
Tong Zhang
Yue Yu
Nikita Mikhalev
Carlotta Trottenberg
Joao Barretto-Bittar
Wenbin Wu
Shweta Prasad
Alumni
news & thoughts
ATTEMPTO Prize for Baumann et al., PNAS, 2023!
We are extremely proud that our recent paper, Sensory Tuning in Neuronal Movement Commands, has won yet another award! This time, the paper was recognized by the ATTEMPTO Prize, which is a prize that was initiated more than 40 years ago already. This prize recognizes outstanding achievements in neuroscience research, and it is celebrated at[…]
Neuroscience 2024!
Our lab participated in this year’s Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting, which took place in Chicago! Carlotta presented an exhaustive comparison of superior colliculus (SC) and primary visual cortex (V1) visual responses. She found that V1 neurons possess non-saturating contrast sensitivity curves, but exclusively for dark contrasts. This suggests that V1 neurons more faithfully transmit[…]
Evolutionary optimization of neuronal processing 2024
Our lab participated in this year’s annual retreat of the DFG-funded Special Priority Programme SPP 2205: Evolutionary Optimization of Neuronal Processing, which took place in Göttingen, Germany. This is the first retreat of the second funding period of the program. In both this and the previous funding period, our lab’s involvement in the SPP was[…]
4th Baltic Biophysics Conference, 2024 Kaunas
Our lab participated in this year’s 4th Baltic Biophysics Conference, which took place in Kaunas, Lithuania. Our lab’s work was featured in a special session on visual neuroscience, with talks about the superior colliculus (SC) and the primary visual cortex (V1). In this session, we got a chance to document our extensive characterization of the[…]
Microsaccadic suppression of vision depends on the image being foveated at the time of generating the eye movements
We have a new paper just published in the Journal of Vision. The paper investigates the phenomenon of microsaccadic suppression of peripheral visual sensitivity. In this phenomenon, it is known that peripheral locations away from the line of sight experience a massive reduction in the ability to process visual stimulus onsets, especially if these onsets[…]
Tübingen Systems Neuroscience Symposium 2024
Our lab participated in this year’s annual Systems Neuroscience Symposium of Tübingen. This is a symposium that is sponsored by our institute, the Werner Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience (CIN), and it features invited speakers from all over the world. The topics covered in this symposium are also very broad, spanning from computational neuroscience to[…]
Keith Rayner Memorial Award at the European Conference on Eye Movements 2024!
Our lab participated in the 22nd European Conference on Eye Movements, which took place in beautiful Ireland! We had two oral presentations and one poster presentation at the conference. In one oral presentation, Tong presented very intriguing transient changes in superior colliculus (SC) neuronal activity that we observe whenever the brain transitions from gaze fixation[…]
Fukuoka, Kyoto, Tokyo…Summer 2024 in Japan
Our lab had an extended scientific excursion in Japan this summer! We first started our journey by going to Fukuoka, in the south of Japan. We participated in the Annual Meeting of the Japanese Neuroscience Society. The meeting took place in the Fukuoka Congress Center, and it included many scientific sessions covering a broad range[…]
“Paper of the Year” award for Baumann et al., PNAS, 2023!
We are very proud of Matthias Baumann and his co-authors! Their 2023 paper, titled “Sensory tuning in neuronal movement commands“, has just won the 2023 Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research Paper of the Year Award! The award was presented at the annual Tübingen NeuroCampus summer fest. Stay tuned for more exciting work by Matthias[…]
Visual suppression for one, visual suppression for all
We have a new Editorial Focus at the Journal of Neurophysiology, describing our take on a recent paper by Zhang, Valsecchi, Gegenfurtner, and Chen on saccadic suppression. In their paper, the authors looked at the phenomenon of reduced visual sensitivity around the time of saccadic eye movements. They found that this suppression of visual sensitivity[…]