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Authors & Affiliations
Miriam Celli, Andrea Zangrossi, Ilaria Mazzonetto, Luca Lorenzon, Maurizio Corbetta
Abstract
Eye movements are known to be driven by stimulus features (e.g., saliency). However, spatiotemporal dynamics of eye movements are remarkably stable within an individual. In a previous study, we recorded eye movements from 120 participants in a free-viewing task. Three principal components explained 60% of the variance of the data. The first principal component (PC1) loaded on fixation duration, and subjects could be clustered in two different visual exploration phenotypes: “static” and “dynamic” viewers. In a second EEG resting-state study on the same sample, carried out one year later, static viewers showed higher alpha power and lower high frequency (beta, gamma) power. Dynamic viewers showed the opposite pattern. Moreover, PC1 loadings negatively correlated with beta-gamma EEG frequency power, but positively correlated with alpha power. These findings show that eye movement dynamics during visual exploration are low dimensional, and that they correlate with spontaneous EEG signals recorded one year later. To examine the reproducibility of this low dimensional structure and its relationship with spontaneous EEG features, we collected visual exploration data and resting-state EEG in the same session in a different cohort of subjects (N=60). Three principal components explained roughly 60% of the variance in the eye-tracking data, consistently with the previous study. Again PC1 loaded on fixation duration statistics. Finally, EEG power at rest significantly correlated with PC1. These results confirm that observers visually explore with different styles, and that these styles relate to intrinsic properties of brain signals. Hence baseline intrinsic brain activity influences cortical circuitries during visual exploration.