Eye movements shape visual learning

Abstract

Most people easily learn to recognize new faces and places, and with more extensive practice they can become experts at visual tasks as complex as radiological diagnosis and action video games. Such perceptual plasticity has been thoroughly studied in the context of training paradigms that require constant fixation. In contrast, when observers learn under more natural conditions, they make frequent saccadic eye movements. Here we show that such eye movements can play an important role in visual learning. Observers performed a task in which they executed a saccade while discriminating the motion of a cued visual stimulus. Additional stimuli, presented simultaneously with the cued one, permitted an assessment of the perceptual integration of information across visual space. Consistent with previous results on perisaccadic remapping [M. Szinte, D. Jonikaitis, M. Rolfs, P. Cavanagh, H. Deubel,J. Neurophysiol.116, 1592–1602 (2016)], most observers preferentially integrated information from locations representing the presaccadic and postsaccadic retinal positions of the cue. With extensive training on the saccade task, these observers gradually acquired the ability to perform similar motion integration without making eye movements. Importantly, the newly acquired pattern of spatial integration was determined by the metrics of the saccades made during training. These results suggest that oculomotor influences on visual processing, long thought to subserve the function of perceptual stability, also play a role in visual plasticity.

Visual perceptual learning generalizes to untrained effectors

“…As a manifestation of plasticity occurring in the adult brain, VPL has significant practical and theoretical implications. For subjects with normal visual acuity, VPL can shed light on fundamental processes, such as perceptual development (Gibson, 1969;Gibson & Pick, 2003) and the formation of visual expertise (Appelbaum & Erickson, 2018;DeLoss, Watanabe, & Andersen, 2015;Deveau, Ozer, & Seitz, 2014;Laamerad, Guitton, & Pack, 2020;Reingold & Sheridan, 2011). There is also evidence that VPL can improve outcomes and be used as a strategy for visual rehabilitation in aging and clinical populations (Campana, Camilleri, Pavan, Veronese, & Lo Giudice, 2014;DeLoss et al, 2015;Huxlin, Martin, Kelly, Riley, Friedman, Burgin, & Hayhoe, 2009;Liao, Gichira, Wang, & Chen, 2015;Maniglia, Cottereau, Soler, & Trotter, 2016;Maniglia, Pavan, Sato, Contemori, Montemurro, Battaglini, & Casco Hayhoe, 2016).…”

Long-range cortical synchronization supports abrupt visual learning

“…Experimental preparation has been described in a previous publication 21 . In brief, high-resolution T1 and T2-weighted anatomical MRIs (0.6-0.8 mm 3 voxels) were acquired for each animal and were used for surgical planning. Animals were implanted with a custom titanium head post (Hybex Innovations, Montreal Canada) using standard sterile surgical techniques.…”

“…Even for simple tasks, such as discriminating the orientation of a line, behavioral changes often emerge after days or weeks of practice (Watanabe & Sasaki, 2015). For more complex tasks, such as the detection of anomalies in medical images, efficient performance requires months or years of training (Reingold & Sheridan, 2011;Laamerad, et al, 2020). Neurophysiological studies have similarly revealed that the adult visual cortex often changes very slowly, if at all, in response to experience (Yang & Maunsell, 2004;Ghose & Maunsell, 2002;Schoups, et al, 2001).…”

Tracking the dynamics of perisaccadic visual signals with magnetoencephalography

“…In these studies, individual neurons respond to visual stimuli at specific positions, but they alter their encoding of space when an eye movement is being planned (Duhamel et al, 1992; Neupane et al, 2016a,b; Sommer & Wurtz, 2006; Nakamura & Colby, 2002). This perisaccadic remapping is thought to play a variety of roles in perception (Cicchini et al, 2013), memory (Umeno & Goldberg, 2001), and learning (Laamerad et al, 2020).…”