Exploring Neural Signatures of Self-Initiated Saccadic and Blink Events in the Real World

Abstract During natural vision, the human brain constantly has to account for self-produced interruptions of visual input, through blinks and saccades, to maintain a stable perception of the world. It remains unclear whether these event-related neural responses are treated similarly due to a common underlying mechanism. To systematically investigate this functional connection, we recorded synchronized mobile EEG and eye-tracking data from freely moving participants as they (visually) explored a city center. Our results replicate prior findings showing that a substantial portion of the neural response is aligned to event onsets in comparison to offset, underscoring the relevance of investigating the beginning and end of these events. Using advanced deconvolution techniques, we disentangled overlapping, time-locked neural contributions associated with the onsets and offsets of saccades and blinks. The results demonstrate that the deconvoluted neural kernels are highly correlated when comparing saccade onset to blink onset, as well as saccade offset to blink offset, for both evoked and induced activity across electrodes. Together, our findings demonstrate that despite their distinct physical profiles, saccades and blinks share a common neural signature that governs both their onset and offset dynamics during unconstrained real-world behavior. Highlights Co-registration of portable EEG and Eye-Tracking yielded meaningful real world data. We studied blinks and saccades as natural interruptions of visual processes. Aligning EEG data to onset and offset underscored the relevance of both timepoints. We deconvoluted overlapping neural activity for onsets/offsets of saccades/blinks. ERPs and TFRs are highly correlated for onset/offset of blinks and saccades.