Eye Blinks, Perception, and Prediction

We usually fail to notice our own eye blinks even though they cause a strong retinal interruption. Inferring from previous works on conscious perception, one may expect high-level visual representations to be “turned off” during visible stimulus-disappearances but not during spontaneous blinks. We tested this prediction using intracranial recordings in human patients. High-level visual cortex showed no filling-in of occluded content and furthermore, it displayed suppression of blink-related transient positive responses. In a follow-up functional magnetic resonance imaging study, we tested also external darkenings triggered by button presses, mimicking blinks’ motor-sensory coupling. These self-initiated darkenings slightly deactivated high-level visual cortex, similarly to blinks, whereas unpredictable darkenings activated the same regions positively. These results argue against neuronal filling-in of blinks and suggest an involvement of general-purpose predictive computation in blink suppression.