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Compression of visual space before saccades

Author

Listed:
  • John Ross

    (University of Western Australia)

  • M. Concetta Morrone

    (Istituto di Neurofisiologia del CNR)

  • David C. Burr

    (Istituto di Neurofisiologia del CNR
    Universita di Roma, 'La Sapienza')

Abstract

Saccadic eye movements, in which the eye moves rapidly between two resting positions, shift the position of our retinal images. If our perception of the world is to remain stable, the visual directions associated with retinal sites, and others they report to, must be updated to compensate for changes in the point of gaze. It has long been suspected that this compensation is achieved by a uniform shift of coordinates driven by an extra-retinal position signal1–3, although some consider this to be unnecessary4–6. Considerable effort has been devoted to a search for such a signal and to measuring its time course and accuracy. Here, by using multiple as well as single targets under normal viewing conditions, we show that changes in apparent visual direction anticipate saccades and are not of the same size, or even in the same direction, for all parts of the visual field. We also show that there is a compression of visual space sufficient to reduce the spacing and even the apparent number of pattern elements. The results are in part consistent with electrophysiological findings of anticipatory shifts in the receptive fields of neurons in parietal cortex7 and superior colliculi8.

Suggested Citation

  • John Ross & M. Concetta Morrone & David C. Burr, 1997. "Compression of visual space before saccades," Nature, Nature, vol. 386(6625), pages 598-601, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:386:y:1997:i:6625:d:10.1038_386598a0
    DOI: 10.1038/386598a0
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    Cited by:

    1. Amir Akbarian & Kelsey Clark & Behrad Noudoost & Neda Nategh, 2021. "A sensory memory to preserve visual representations across eye movements," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 12(1), pages 1-9, December.
    2. Kaiser Niknam & Amir Akbarian & Kelsey Clark & Yasin Zamani & Behrad Noudoost & Neda Nategh, 2019. "Characterizing and dissociating multiple time-varying modulatory computations influencing neuronal activity," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(9), pages 1-38, September.

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