Blurring by fixational eye movements

Packer, Orin S.; Williams, David R.

doi:10.1016/0042-6989(92)90052-k

Cited by 29 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…The observed whitening of the retinal input may provide an explanation for the lack of perceived blurring during fixational instability [29]. With normal eye movements, a predominance of low spatial frequency power only occurs at zero temporal frequency (the static component of the visual input in Fig.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Temporal Encoding of Spatial Information during Active Visual Fixation

et al. 2012

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Summary Humans and other species continually perform microscopic eye movements, even when attending to a single point [1-3]. These movements, which include microscopic drifts and microsaccades, are under control of the oculomotor system [2, 4, 5], elicit strong responses throughout the visual system [6-11], and have been thought to serve important functions [12-16]. The influence of these fixational eye movements on the acquisition and neural processing of visual information remains unknown. Here, we show that during viewing of natural scenes, microscopic eye movements carry out a crucial information-processing step: they remove predictable correlations in natural scenes by equalizing the spatial power of the retinal image within the frequency range of ganglion cells' peak sensitivity. This transformation, which had been attributed to center-surround receptive field organization [17-19], occurs prior to any neural processing, and reveals a form of matching between the statistics of natural images and those of normal eye movements. We further show that the combined effect of microscopic eye movements and retinal receptive field organization is to convert spatial luminance discontinuities into synchronous firing events, thus beginning the process of edge extraction. In sum, our results show that microscopic eye movements are fundamental to two goals of early visual processing —redundancy reduction [20, 21] and feature extraction— and, thus, that neural representations are intrinsically sensory-motor from the very first processing stages.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Temporal Encoding of Spatial Information during Active Visual Fixation

et al. 2012

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“…Yet they are often ignored by theoreticians and regarded as a nuisance by experimentalists. When they are taken into account, they are frequently regarded as a problem that the visual system has to overcome in order to establish fine spatial representations [4] and avoid perceptual blurring of the image [5]. …”

Section: The Unsteady Eyementioning

confidence: 99%

The unsteady eye: an information-processing stage, not a bug

Rucci

Victor

2015

Trends in Neurosciences

184

178

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How is space represented in the visual system? At first glance, the answer to this fundamental question appears straightforward: spatial information is directly encoded in the locations of neurons within maps. This concept has long dominated visual neuroscience, leading to mainstream theories of how neurons encode information. However, an accumulation of evidence indicates that this purely spatial view is incomplete, and that even for static images, the representation is fundamentally spatiotemporal. The evidence for this new understanding centers on recent experimental findings concerning the functional role of fixational eye movements, the tiny movements humans and other species continually perform, even when attending to a single point. Here, we review some of these findings and discuss their functional implications.

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“…Thus, fixational eye movements are sufficient for enabling vision of stationary scenes, but how they do so remains unknown. Given the temporal integration windows of neurons, it also remains unclear how the visual system establishes fine spatial representations (Burak et al 2010) and avoids perceptual blurring of the image (Packer & Williams 1992) despite the incessant presence of these movements.…”

Section: Vision and Eye Movementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Control and Functions of Fixational Eye Movements

Rucci

Poletti

2015

Annu. Rev. Vis. Sci.

183

151

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Humans and other species explore a visual scene by rapidly shifting their gaze 2-3 times every second. Although the eyes may appear immobile in the brief intervals in between saccades, microscopic (fixational) eye movements are always present, even when attending to a single point. These movements occur during the very periods in which visual information is acquired and processed and their functions have long been debated. Recent technical advances in controlling retinal stimulation during normal oculomotor activity have shed new light on the visual contributions of fixational eye movements and their degree of control. The emerging body of evidence, reviewed in this article, indicates that fixational eye movements are important components of the strategy by which the visual system processes fine spatial details, enabling both precise positioning of the stimulus on the retina and encoding of spatial information into the joint space-time domain.

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Blurring by fixational eye movements

Cited by 29 publications

References 35 publications

Temporal Encoding of Spatial Information during Active Visual Fixation

Temporal Encoding of Spatial Information during Active Visual Fixation

The unsteady eye: an information-processing stage, not a bug

Control and Functions of Fixational Eye Movements

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