The effects of aging in the control of eye movements and its relation to perceptual and motor decisions
Aging involves a series of changes affecting both our cognitive abilities and our motor performance. As any other action, the control we exert over our eye movements changes due to aging. For example, the older we are, the less accurately we pursue moving targets. Even though vision -assisted by eye movements- is the main sensory source of information we use to make most of our decisions (and especially those related to actions), the effect that changes in the oculomotor behavior have on our perceptual and motor decisions remains unknown. The aim of DECEYEDE is to define how oculomotor control evolves with age, and how these changes accompany changes in perceptual and motor decisions. To do so, we will first assess how adults of different ages look at targets in dynamic scenarios about which they have to make a decision. Several parameters such as saccade latencies, number of saccades or pursuit gain will be evaluated, and a relation between such parameters and the performance in perceptual and motor decisions tasks will be established. Second, we will apply parameter based-feedback to explore if we can train eye movements in order to improve performance. We will do so by providing feedback to participants about specific parameters of their oculomotor performance. Such feedback will try to steer eye movements towards parameters similar to those that lead to better perceptual and motor performance. DECEYEDE will advance knowledge on the effects of aging on how we sample visual information from the world around us, and will allow further understanding of the mechanisms behind the decline in perceptual and motor tasks with aging. Furthermore, a successful method to train eye movements based on parameter feedback would represent a breakthrough that would set foundational principles for new ways of sensorimotor learning that will likely impact on the industry developing serious games or training and rehabilitation programs.