Two new studies from the Centre for Neuroscience (CNS), Indian Institute of Science (IISc), have explored how closely attention and eye movements are linked, while unveiling how the brain coordinates the two processes. Attention is a unique phenomenon that allows us to focus on a specific object in our visual world, and ignore distractions. When we pay attention to an object, we tend to gaze towards it. Therefore, scientists have long suspected that attention is tightly coupled to rapid eye movements, called saccades. In fact, even before our eyes move towards an object, our attention focuses on it, allowing us to perceive it more clearly – a well-known phenomenon called pre-saccadic attention, IISc said in a press release. However, in a new study published in PLOS Biology, the researchers at CNS show that this perceptual advantage is lost when the object changes suddenly, a split second before our gaze falls upon it, making it harder for us to process what changed.