Pre-saccadic remapping relies on dynamics of spatial attention

Abstract

Each eye movement shifts the projections of the visual scene on the retina. It has been proposed that the receptive fields of neurons in oculomotor areas are remapped pre-saccadically to account for these shifts. While remapping of the whole visual scene seems prohibitively complex, selection by visual attention may limit these processes to a subset of attended locations. Because attentional selection consumes time, remapping of attended locations should evolve in time, too. In our study, we cued a spatial location by presenting an attention capturing cue at different times before a saccade and constructed detailed maps of attentional allocation across the visual field. We observed no remapping when the cue appeared shortly before saccade. In contrast, when the cue appeared sufficiently early before saccade, attentional resources were reallocated to the remapped location. Our results suggest that pre-saccadic remapping is an attentional process relying on the spatial and temporal dynamics of visual attention.

Spatiotopic updating across saccades in the absence of awareness

“…In contrast to awareness being not necessary for the spatiotopic updating, the buildup of spatiotopic neural representation requires spatial attention (Crespi et al, 2011;Melcher, 2008;Melcher, 2009;Melcher, 2011;Melcher & Colby, 2008;Szinte et al, 2018). Crespi et al (2011) found that when participants were conducting a demanding attention task on the foveal stimuli, BOLD responses evoked by moving stimuli unrelated to the fovea task were mainly tuned in retinotopic coordinates.…”

“…While the input visual information during saccades is suppressed, our conscious representation of the visual scene across saccades seems to be smooth and continuous, yet we typically do not keep track of the whole visual scene. Selective attention is one of the potential mechanisms to help maintain visual stability (Crespi, Biagi, d'Avossa, Burr, Tosetti, & Morrone, 2011;Melcher, 2008;Melcher, 2011;Szinte, Jonikaitis, Rangelov, & Deubel, 2018). Attentional selection contributes to visual stability by restricting information processing to salient or task-relevant objects.…”

Sounds are remapped across saccades

“…Such a supra-modal topological map could allow multi-sensory space constancy via predictive remapping of locations as a function of their ability to attract spatial attention (Cavanagh, Hunt, Afraz, & Rolfs, 2010;Rolfs & Szinte, 2016;Szinte, Jonikaitis, Rangelov, & Deubel, 2018) rather than as a function of their modality. As an alternative, one could propose that multiple reference frames are simultaneously maintained.…”

Modulations of foveal vision associated with microsaccade preparation

“…This modulation appears to depend on fast presaccadic shifts of attention (1,3). Even before the eye starts to move, peripheral vision is enhanced (4)(5)(6)(7)(8), and sensory tuning is reshaped at the saccade target location; the gain of high spatial frequencies increases (9,10), and orientation tuning narrows (5,9). These changes occur only briefly, from approximately 60 to 100 ms before the onset of a saccade (4,5,(9)(10)(11)(12)(13), and have a profound influence on visual perception, as humans perform saccades every few hundred milliseconds.…”

“…This effectively offers a glimpse of what is going to fall at the center of gaze after the saccade (14). In addition, presaccadic attention is also believed to play a role in maintaining spatial stability across saccades (6,9,(15)(16)(17) and in keeping track of the attended objects across saccades (6,13,18).…”