Saccades are phase-locked to alpha oscillations in the occipital and medial temporal lobe during successful memory encoding.
Staudigl T., Hartl E., Noachtar S., Doeller CF., Jensen O.
Efficient sampling of visual information requires a coordination of eye movements and ongoing brain oscillations. Using intracranial and magnetoencephalography (MEG) recordings, we show that saccades are locked to the phase of visual alpha oscillations and that this coordination is related to successful mnemonic encoding of visual scenes. Furthermore, parahippocampal and retrosplenial cortex involvement in this coordination reflects effective vision-to-memory mapping, highlighting the importance of neural oscillations for the interaction between visual and memory domains.