Visual cues that are effective for contextual saccade adaptation

Abstract

Azadi R, Harwood MR. Visual cues that are effective for contextual saccade adaptation.

Context cue-dependent saccadic adaptation in rhesus macaques cannot be elicited using color

“…3 and 5) was qualitatively similar to that observed during color cue experiments. These observations are consistent with those hypotheses that state that color cannot be used as a visual cue for adaptation and are in line with prior observations made in humans (Azadi and Harwood 2014;Benjamin et al In press;Deubel 1995). A rather simple and parsimonious explanation can readily account for our findings: adaptation is driven by the average error (visual or motor) across numerous trials.…”

“…Although our results concur with those observations made by Deubel (1995) and Azadi and Harwood (2014), our experiments provide a more extensive data set to support the assertion that the saccadic adaptive control system does not differentiate between color targets of the same shape. These data are interpreted in the light of previous context-dependent adaptation studies.…”

“…To the best of our knowledge, the experiments discussed in the current report were the first attempt to elicit context-dependent saccade adaptation in the rhesus monkey using a visual cue of any type. Furthermore, our report improves and extends the human experiments performed by both Deubel (1995) and Azadi and Harwood (2014) in several ways: 1) Deubel made his observations in two human subjects with very few trials and only two experiments. Our data set therefore represents a much more powerful assessment of Deubel's preliminary observations using colored, static targets; 2) we used large intra-saccade target displacements (50% of target eccentricity) which have been successful at eliciting large gain changes in head-restrained monkey subjects (figure 11 from Cecala and Freedman 2009).…”

“…Our data set therefore represents a much more powerful assessment of Deubel's preliminary observations using colored, static targets; 2) we used large intra-saccade target displacements (50% of target eccentricity) which have been successful at eliciting large gain changes in head-restrained monkey subjects (figure 11 from Cecala and Freedman 2009). This should have increased the likelihood of observing even a small, color-dependent change in saccade gain; 3) both Deubel (1995) and Azadi and Harwood (2014) attempted to simultaneously increase and decrease saccade gain within the same axis of the primary saccade, which is much like the "horizontal intermixed" experiments in the current report (Fig. 2).…”

“…Deubel (1995), in a few human subjects, was unable to elicit distinct gain states during horizontal adaptation using colored, static targets (red crosses and green circles) that were displaced by a few degrees of visual angle along the same axis as the primary saccade. Subsequent investigations of human saccadic adaptation were also unable to elicit contextdependent adaptation using either static shapes (diamonds vs. squares; Bahcall and Kowler 2000) or moving visual targets with different shapes and colors (Azadi and Harwood 2014). However, other explorations of saccadic adaptation have shown that visual cues such as flickering vs. nonflickering targets (Herman et al 2009), yellow squares vs. green circles (Madelain et al 2010), and other properties of moving targets (speed and direction) (Azadi and Harwood 2014) can be used to elicit different gain states.…”