Ocular tracking responses to background motion gated by feature-based attention

Abstract

In contrast to spatial attention, we know little about the role of feature-based attention in determining this ocular response. To probe feature-based effects of background motion on involuntary eye movements, we presented human observers with a balanced background perturbation. Two clouds of dots moved in opposite vertical directions while observers tracked a target moving in horizontal direction. Additionally, they had to discriminate a change in the direction of motion (Ϯ10°from vertical) of one of the clouds. A vertical ocular following response occurred in response to the motion of the attended cloud. When motion selection was based on motion direction and color of the dots, the peak velocity of the tracking response was 30% of the tracking response elicited in a single task with only one direction of background motion. In two other experiments, we tested the effect of the perturbation when motion selection was based on color, by having motion direction vary unpredictably, or on motion direction alone. Although the gain of pursuit in the horizontal direction was significantly reduced in all experiments, indicating a trade-off between perceptual and oculomotor tasks, ocular responses to perturbations were only observed when selection was based on both motion direction and color. It appears that selection by motion direction can only be effective for driving ocular tracking when the relevant elements can be segregated before motion onset. smooth pursuit eye movements; feature-based attention; attention; motion; eye movements A CENTRAL QUESTION IN UNDERSTANDING how perception and action may be articulated is whether perceptual selection and eye movement control rely on similar filtering mechanisms (for a review Kowler 2007;Schutz et al. 2011). Involuntary ocular tracking eye movements offer a good opportunity for understanding early filtering mechanisms given that their initiation can involve relatively few processing steps (for a review, see Masson and Perrinet 2012).Among involuntary tracking eye movements, ocular following is a quasireflexive response to motion covering a large part of the visual field (Kawano 1999;Miles et al. 1986), which is believed to reflect the unfolding of visual motion processing, providing a window on the link between neural computation and behavior (Ilg 1997;Lisberger et al. 1987;Masson and Perrinet 2012). Ocular following depends on first-order motion signals, with little input from higher order motion processing (Hayashi et al. 2008), suggesting that attention may have a minor role. However, this latter aspect is poorly understood, especially in relation to feature-based attention, the ability to select a specific feature dimension (e.g., motion, color, and shape), or value (upward vs. downward motion) across the visual field. In the context of voluntary and involuntary tracking eye movements, feature-based attention may have a role in helping integrate motion information across space, as for tracking surfaces occluded by objects in the foreground (e.g., Grossberg 1998; Mestre a...

Perceptual restoration fails to recover unconscious processing for smooth eye movements after occipital stroke

“…It is well established that sensory processing among neurons in MT and MST can be strongly influenced by attention (Treue & Maunsell, 1996; Treue & Trujillo, 1999) and also by target selection immediately prior to saccades (Ferrera & Lisberger, 1997; Recanzone & Wurtz, 2000). Recent studies suggest that like target selection in voluntary pursuit, selective attention can modulate ocular following responses (Souto & Kerzel, 2014), and our findings here and previously (Kwon et al, 2019) support this notion. Pre-saccadic attention is thought to operate through feedback from oculomotor planning areas to visual cortex (Moore & Armstrong, 2003; Moore & Fallah, 2004), and while its impact has been studied mainly in visual area V4, it is also thought to occur in MT/MST.…”

Visual selective attention and the control of tracking eye movements: a critical review

“…We have seen repeatedly that shifting attention away from the pursuit target only compromises pursuit performance when there is relative motion between the pursuit target and objects that are attentively tracked. We have also asked whether ongoing pursuit eye movements are affected by the allocation of feature attention to peripheral motion (73). Feature attention refers to our ability to select visual information based on specific features independently of spatial location.…”

“…We tested whether feature attention can gate involuntary ocular tracking in the direction of the attended motion. The task was to pursue a dot horizontally while discriminating between subtle changes in the vertical trajectory of a field of randomly distributed dots (73). The dual-task paradigm is shown in Fig.…”

“…D: the peak response to vertical motion was averaged for every trial across observers when cued by motion direction and color (upper left condition in C), showing that observers could select target features from the start, with no noticeable effect of trial number. A-D are adapted from Souto and Kerzel (73).…”

Presaccadic motion integration drives a predictive postsaccadic following response

“…Recent studies also show that wide field stimuli are not necessary to drive responses, and in fact, OFR pools motion preferentially from more foveal locations (Quaia, Sheliga, FitzGibbon, & Optican, 2012) and can be driven even by stimuli only 4 deg 2 in size (Quaia et al, 2012). Further, recent studies show that OFR is not purely reflexive, but can be influenced by higher-level factors, such as selective attention (Souto & Kerzel, 2014). These findings raise the question of whether or not an involuntary selection of motion features, as we might expect during presaccadic attention, could influence OFR.…”