Mar. 4, 2009 With assistance from the classic book character
Where's Waldo?, researchers at Barrow Neurological Institute at
St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center have recently made a
major advance in understanding how the brain searches for
objects of interest. Susana Martinez-Conde, PhD, and fellow
researchers Jorge Otero-Millan, Xoana Troncoso, PhD, Stephen
Macknik, PhD, and Ignacio Serrano-Pedraza, PhD, recently
conducted a study asking participants to find Waldo. As
participants searched, their eye movements were simultaneously
recorded. Results showed that the rate of microsaccades – tiny,
jerk-like fixational eye movements – dramatically increased when
participants found Waldo. "This discovery helps explain human
searching behavior, which can assist us in finding keys on a
cluttered desk or recognizing a child's face on a playground,"
says Dr. Martinez-Conde. The central role of microsaccades in
visual perception has been a highly debated, and vaguely
understood, topic among researchers for decades.