The National Eye Institute awarded the University of Washington $801,202 on August 1, 2026, under the Vision Research program (CFDA 93.867) to investigate the mechanisms underlying saccadic suppression—the attenuation of visual perception during eye movements.
The research examines how much signal loss occurs in the eye versus the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) by simultaneously recording from identified retinal ganglion cell axons and their postsynaptic targets in the LGN using high-density silicon probes in awake behaving primates making saccades. The work applies state-of-the-art computational models of retinal processing fitted directly to neural recordings to characterize light responses at two key visual system stages and the transfer function linking them. The investigator will quantify ocular and thalamic contributions to saccadic suppression—a phenomenon produced by serial concatenation of multiple mechanisms at the ocular, retinal, synaptic, and cortical levels that have rarely been studied simultaneously in the same experimental preparation. Understanding these principles is intended to inform recovery strategies for visual dysfunction following trauma or neurological disease.
Performance takes place in Seattle, Washington. The period of performance runs from August 1, 2026, through February 28, 2031.