AI Insight
Researchers developed an MRI-based eye-tracking method to measure eye movements during eyes-closed resting states and sleep, revealing that gaze behavior remains coupled with brain activity even when eyes are closed. They found widespread brain activity correlated with inferred gaze movements across much of the cerebral cortex and cerebellum, including visual regions, and that these patterns persisted during both rest and sleep. Accounting for these eye movements also changed estimates of functional brain connectivity, suggesting gaze represents an important hidden variable in brain imaging studies.
Why it matters
This finding challenges the assumption that eye movements are irrelevant during eyes-closed brain imaging studies and suggests researchers should account for gaze when analyzing resting-state fMRI data. The eye-brain coupling during sleep and rest may also provide new ways to study consciousness and different states of awareness non-invasively.
Understand the Science
⚠️ Preprint – Noch nicht peer-reviewed
Dieser Artikel wurde noch nicht von unabhängigen Experten begutachtet. Die Ergebnisse sind vorläufig und sollten mit Vorsicht interpretiert werden.
Gaze behavior and brain activity are tightly coupled during perception and mental imagery. Whether this coupling extends to eyes-closed states remains largely unknown, primarily because measuring eye movements alongside brain activity is difficult when the eyes are closed. Here, we used a scalable MR-based eye-tracking approach to reconstruct gaze behavior from fMRI data during eyes-closed rest and sleep. We found widespread coupling between inferred gaze behavior and brain activity distributed through much of the cerebral cortex and cerebellum, including many regions typically associated with vision. These dynamics largely persisted across the two states. Additionally, accounting for gaze systematically altered functional connectivity estimates of large-scale brain organization. Together, these results underscore the importance of considering gaze as a hidden behavioral dimension of intrinsic fMRI signals, even in eyes-closed states. More broadly, our findings suggest that eye-brain dynamics may provide a window into eyes-closed states of consciousness.
Source: Brain-wide gaze-dependent activity during eyes-closed rest and sleep