One of the more enduring mysteries of neuroscience is how the visual system constructs robust maps of the world that remain stable in the face of frequent eye movements. Here we show that encoding the position of objects in external space is a relatively slow process, building up over hundreds of milliseconds. We display targets to which human subjects saccade after a variable preview duration. As they saccade, the target is displaced leftwards or rightwards, and subjects report the displacement direction. When subjects saccade to targets without delay, sensitivity is poor; but if the target is viewed for 300-500 ms before saccading, sensitivity is similar to that during fixation with a strong visual mask to dampen transients. These results suggest that the poor displacement thresholds usually observed in the "saccadic suppression of displacement" paradigm are a result of the fact that the target has had insufficient time to be encoded in memory, and not a result of the action of special mechanisms conferring saccadic stability. Under more natural conditions, trans-saccadic displacement detection is as good as in fixation, when the displacement transients are masked.

Spatial position information accumulates steadily over time / Zimmermann E; Morrone MC; Burr DC.. - In: THE JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE. - ISSN 0270-6474. - STAMPA. - (2013), pp. 18396-18401.

Spatial position information accumulates steadily over time.

BURR, DAVID CHARLES
2013

Abstract

One of the more enduring mysteries of neuroscience is how the visual system constructs robust maps of the world that remain stable in the face of frequent eye movements. Here we show that encoding the position of objects in external space is a relatively slow process, building up over hundreds of milliseconds. We display targets to which human subjects saccade after a variable preview duration. As they saccade, the target is displaced leftwards or rightwards, and subjects report the displacement direction. When subjects saccade to targets without delay, sensitivity is poor; but if the target is viewed for 300-500 ms before saccading, sensitivity is similar to that during fixation with a strong visual mask to dampen transients. These results suggest that the poor displacement thresholds usually observed in the "saccadic suppression of displacement" paradigm are a result of the fact that the target has had insufficient time to be encoded in memory, and not a result of the action of special mechanisms conferring saccadic stability. Under more natural conditions, trans-saccadic displacement detection is as good as in fixation, when the displacement transients are masked.
2013
18396
18401
Zimmermann E; Morrone MC; Burr DC.
File in questo prodotto:
File Dimensione Formato  
18396.full.pdf

accesso aperto

Tipologia: Pdf editoriale (Version of record)
Licenza: Creative commons
Dimensione 1.23 MB
Formato Adobe PDF
1.23 MB Adobe PDF

I documenti in FLORE sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.

Utilizza questo identificatore per citare o creare un link a questa risorsa: https://hdl.handle.net/2158/849896
Citazioni
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.pmc??? ND
  • Scopus 47
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.isi??? 46
social impact