The role of selective inhibition in adaptive oculomotor control

Focusing on stimuli that are important for a given task, rather than reflexively orienting to whatever is the most salient object in the environment permits us to avoid being controlled by our surroundings and enables us to confront our world in a determined and goal-directed manner. It allows our behavior to flow from internal goals and our own free will as opposed to being purely reactive. Many of the brain’s more elementary information processing pathways do in fact tend to steer us to whatever is bright and load and intense, but on top of these mechanisms a system of cognitive control exists that enables us to selectively inhibit such reactions in favor of alternatives that may be more fitting for a given situation. The present thesis explores this system of selective suppression of response activation, focusing on the oculomotor system in particular. Experiments were carried out to investigate how selective oculomotor inhibition compares with previous accounts centering on motor behavior, how it develops with old age and what effects advance knowledge of impending response conflict or conflicts in the recent past may have.