Occipital Alpha and Accommodative Vergence, Pursuit Tracking, and Fast Eye Movements

The parietal‐occipital EEG was recorded while subjects performed various fixation, accommodation, and tracking maneuvers with stationary and moving targets. For some experiments the target was continuously in view and independent of the EEG; in others, a feedback path connected the occurrence of parietal‐occipital alpha with the visibility of the target. The results show that alpha attenuation or blocking is not due to “visual attention'” but to processes of fixation, lens accommodation, and pursuit tracking. Saccadic movements were not reliably linked to alpha or alpha “blocking.'” The utility of feedback methods for testing the hypotheses that visual control processes are linked to the parietal‐occipital alpha rhythms was demonstrated.