We are pleased to share our new article, now published in The Journal of Neuroscience:

Sustained dynamics of saccadic inhibition and adaptive oculomotor responses during continuous exploration
Celeste Cafaro, Giovanni Cirillo, Giovanna Vermiglio, Carlo Cavaliere, Alessio Fracasso, and Antimo Buonocore
Journal of Neuroscience, 23 July 2026 https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1064-25.2026

When we explore the visual world, our eyes are constantly moving. Yet sudden events in the environment can briefly interrupt this ongoing behavior. This interruption is not a failure of the system: it is one of the ways in which vision remains sensitive to change.

In previous work, we discussed the idea that visual interruption may be an inevitable consequence of encountering a new event during ongoing oculomotor behavior (Buonocore & Hafed, 2023). In the new study, we asked a further question: what happens when such interruptions occur repeatedly during continuous visual exploration?

To address this, participants freely explored visual arrays while brief visual flashes appeared multiple times during the same trial. These flashes produced a reliable, short-lasting suppression of eye movements, followed by a rebound in movement probability. Crucially, the initial interruption remained stable across repetitions: sudden visual events continued to pause ongoing eye movements with consistent timing and strength.

What changed was what happened next. Across repeated stimulation, the post-interruption rebound progressively declined. In other words, the visual system continued to keep the “brake” ready, but became more selective in how strongly it restarted movement after repeated events.

This dissociation suggests a form of oculomotor habituation. Repetition does not appear to weaken the capacity to interrupt ongoing behavior. Instead, it selectively constrains the motor output that follows interruption.

Functionally, this imbalance points to a recalibration within the saccade generator: inhibitory capacity is preserved, while the tendency to generate a new eye movement after repeated stimulation is reduced. More broadly, the findings show how saccadic inhibition can reveal a dynamic decoupling between sensory input and motor output during naturalistic visual exploration.

We hope this work contributes to a better understanding of how the visual and oculomotor systems balance two competing needs: remaining sensitive to sudden events, while adapting behavior when those events repeat over time.