Paper accepted in Nature Communications

Chen, S., Zhang, X., Li, X., Jensen, O., Theeuwes, J., and Wang, B. (in press). Learned statistical regularity drives anticipatory micro-saccades toward suppressed distractor locations. Nat. Commun.

We found that when people learn that when distractions appear repeatedly at certain locations, their eyes - surprisingly - make tiny anticipatory movements (called micro-saccades) toward those locations before the distractions even appear.  Also alpha-band activity carried decodable representations of high-probability distractor locations. This suggests the brain pro-actively learns these patterns and prepares itself to ignore the distractions. The findings resolve a debate about whether our brains suppress distractions through advance preparation or by initially attending to them first.