Dataset Information

The coordinate system of endogenous spatial attention during smooth pursuit.

ABSTRACT: A central question in vision is whether spatial attention is represented in an eye-centered (retinotopic) or world-centered (spatiotopic) reference-frame. Most previous studies on this question focused on how coordinates are modulated across saccades. In the present study, we investigated the reference-frame of attention across smooth pursuit eye-movements using a goal-directed saccade task. In two experiments, participants were asked to pursue a moving target while attending to one or two grating stimuli. On each trial, one stimulus was constant in its retinal position and the other was constant in its spatial position. Upon detection of a slight change in stimulus orientation, participants were asked to stop pursuing and perform a fast saccade toward the modified stimulus. In the focused attention condition, they attended one, predefined, stimulus, and in the divided attention condition they attended both. In Experiment 1 the angle of the orientation change marking the target event was constant across participants and conditions. In Experiment 2, the angle was individually adapted to equate performance across participants and conditions. Findings of the two experiments were consistent and showed that the enhancement of mean visual sensitivity in the focused relative to the divided attention condition was similar in magnitude for both retinotopic and spatiotopic targets. This indicates that during smooth pursuit, endogenous attention was proportionally divided between targets in retinotopic and spatiotopic frames of reference.

SUBMITTER: Hilo-Merkovich R

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7424112 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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The coordinate system of endogenous spatial attention during smooth pursuit.

Hilo-Merkovich Rinat R Yuval-Greenberg Shlomit S

Journal of vision 20200701 7

A central question in vision is whether spatial attention is represented in an eye-centered (retinotopic) or world-centered (spatiotopic) reference-frame. Most previous studies on this question focused on how coordinates are modulated across saccades. In the present study, we investigated the reference-frame of attention across smooth pursuit eye-movements using a goal-directed saccade task. In two experiments, participants were asked to pursue a moving target while attending to one or two grati ...[more]

PMID: 32720972

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Project description:Smooth pursuit eye movements (pursuit) are used to minimize the retinal motion of moving objects. During pursuit, the pattern of motion on the retina carries not only information about the object movement but also reafferent information about the eye movement itself. The latter arises from the retinal flow of the stationary world in the direction opposite to the eye movement. To extract the global direction of motion of the tracked object and stationary world, the visual system needs to integrate ambiguous local motion measurements (i.e., the aperture problem). Unlike the tracked object, the stationary world's global motion is entirely determined by the eye movement and thus can be approximately derived from motor commands sent to the eye (i.e., from an efference copy). Because retinal motion opposite to the eye movement is dominant during pursuit, different motion integration mechanisms might be used for retinal motion in the same direction and opposite to pursuit. To investigate motion integration during pursuit, we tested direction discrimination of a brief change in global object motion. The global motion stimulus was a circular array of small static apertures within which one-dimensional gratings moved. We found increased coherence thresholds and a qualitatively different reflexive ocular tracking for global motion opposite to pursuit. Both effects suggest reduced sampling of motion opposite to pursuit, which results in an impaired ability to extract coherence in motion signals in the reafferent direction. We suggest that anisotropic motion integration is an adaptation to asymmetric retinal motion patterns experienced during pursuit eye movements. NEW & NOTEWORTHY This study provides a new understanding of how the visual system achieves coherent perception of an object's motion while the eyes themselves are moving. The visual system integrates local motion measurements to create a coherent percept of object motion. An analysis of perceptual judgments and reflexive eye movements to a brief change in an object's global motion confirms that the visual and oculomotor systems pick fewer samples to extract global motion opposite to the eye movement.

Project description:Smooth pursuit and motion perception have mainly been investigated with stimuli moving along linear trajectories. Here we studied the quality of pursuit movements to curved motion trajectories in human observers and examined whether the pursuit responses would be sensitive enough to discriminate various degrees of curvature. In a two-interval forced-choice task subjects pursued a Gaussian blob moving along a curved trajectory and then indicated in which interval the curve was flatter. We also measured discrimination thresholds for the same curvatures during fixation. Motion curvature had some specific effects on smooth pursuit properties: trajectories with larger amounts of curvature elicited lower open-loop acceleration, lower pursuit gain, and larger catch-up saccades compared with less curved trajectories. Initially, target motion curvatures were underestimated; however, ∼300 ms after pursuit onset pursuit responses closely matched the actual curved trajectory. We calculated perceptual thresholds for curvature discrimination, which were on the order of 1.5 degrees of visual angle (°) for a 7.9° curvature standard. Oculometric sensitivity to curvature discrimination based on the whole pursuit trajectory was quite similar to perceptual performance. Oculometric thresholds based on smaller time windows were higher. Thus smooth pursuit can quite accurately follow moving targets with curved trajectories, but temporal integration over longer periods is necessary to reach perceptual thresholds for curvature discrimination.NEW & NOTEWORTHY Even though motion trajectories in the real world are frequently curved, most studies of smooth pursuit and motion perception have investigated linear motion. We show that pursuit initially underestimates the curvature of target motion and is able to reproduce the target curvature ∼300 ms after pursuit onset. Temporal integration of target motion over longer periods is necessary for pursuit to reach the level of precision found in perceptual discrimination of curvature.

Dataset Information

The coordinate system of endogenous spatial attention during smooth pursuit.

Publications

The coordinate system of endogenous spatial attention during smooth pursuit.

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