Eye Movements Modulate Visual Receptive Fields of V4 Neurons

115

How our perceptual experience of the world remains stable and continuous in the face of continuous rapid eye movements still remains a mystery. This review discusses some recent progress towards understanding the neural and psychophysical processes that accompany these eye movements. We firstly report recent evidence from imaging studies in humans showing that many brain regions are tuned in spatiotopic coordinates, but only for items that are actively attended. We then describe a series of experiments measuring the spatial and temporal phenomena that occur around the time of saccades, and discuss how these could be related to visual stability. Finally, we introduce the concept of the spatio-temporal receptive field to describe the local spatiotopicity exhibited by many neurons when the eyes move.

“…This behaviour is particularly evident in areas LIP and FEF, but has been reported in many areas including superior colliculus, V3 and even V1 and V2 (e.g. [93][94][95]). …”

Section: Neurons With 'Shifting Receptive Fields'mentioning

confidence: 71%

Spatiotopic coding and remapping in humans

Burr

Morrone

2011

115

“…RFs of neurons in these later areas differ in many important respects, but here we focus on the distinction between retinotopy and spatiotopy. In addition, RFs change in different ways in the interval preceding an eye movement ( [55]; see §5), but here we restrict the discussion to pre-saccadic RF shifts in the direction of the eye movement, usually called predictive remapping.…”

Section: Remapping and Attention: Neurophysiologymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Importantly, their model does so without incorporating predictive remapping in the sense that cells become selectively responsive to their FF. Rather, their model relies on RF shifts towards the saccade target [55]. For selective parts of the visual field, this results in RF shifts that resemble predictive remapping, but this is an illusion (figure 5).…”

Section: Remapping and Attention: Alternative Interpretationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Visual attention and stability

Mathôt

Theeuwes

2011

In the present review, we address the relationship between attention and visual stability. Even though with each eye, head and body movement the retinal image changes dramatically, we perceive the world as stable and are able to perform visually guided actions. However, visual stability is not as complete as introspection would lead us to believe. We attend to only a few items at a time and stability is maintained only for those items. There appear to be two distinct mechanisms underlying visual stability. The first is a passive mechanism: the visual system assumes the world to be stable, unless there is a clear discrepancy between the pre-and post-saccadic image of the region surrounding the saccade target. This is related to the pre-saccadic shift of attention, which allows for an accurate preview of the saccade target. The second is an active mechanism: information about attended objects is remapped within retinotopic maps to compensate for eye movements. The locus of attention itself, which is also characterized by localized retinotopic activity, is remapped as well. We conclude that visual attention is crucial in our perception of a stable world.

“…Neurons in monkey V4 also show dynamic receptive field changes around the time of a saccade [43]. In this study, the receptive field of neurons in V4 has been mapped with a grid of stationary stimuli during fixation and around eye movement.…”

Section: Perceptual and Physiological Phenomena Before And During Sacmentioning

confidence: 99%

Computational models of spatial updating in peri-saccadic perception

Hamker

Zirnsak

Ziesche

et al. 2011

Perceptual phenomena that occur around the time of a saccade, such as peri-saccadic mislocalization or saccadic suppression of displacement, have often been linked to mechanisms of spatial stability. These phenomena are usually regarded as errors in processes of trans-saccadic spatial transformations and they provide important tools to study these processes. However, a true understanding of the underlying brain processes that participate in the preparation for a saccade and in the transfer of information across it requires a closer, more quantitative approach that links different perceptual phenomena with each other and with the functional requirements of ensuring spatial stability. We review a number of computational models of peri-saccadic spatial perception that provide steps in that direction. Although most models are concerned with only specific phenomena, some generalization and interconnection between them can be obtained from a comparison. Our analysis shows how different perceptual effects can coherently be brought together and linked back to neuronal mechanisms on the way to explaining vision across saccades.