A physiological perspective on fixational eye movements.
Saved in:
| Title: | A physiological perspective on fixational eye movements. |
|---|---|
| Authors: | Snodderly, D. Max1 max.snodderly@austin.utexas.edu |
| Source: | Vision Research. Jan2016, Vol. 118, p31-47. 17p. |
| Subjects: | Saccadic eye movements, Visual perception, Receptive fields (Neurology), Gaze, Laboratory monkeys, Neural physiology, Neural pathways, Occipital lobe, Attention, Biological models, Eye movements, Research funding, Vision, Physiology |
| Abstract: | For a behavioral neuroscientist, fixational eye movements are a double-edged sword. On one edge, they make control of visual stimuli difficult, but on the other edge they provide insight into the ways the visual system acquires information from the environment. We have studied macaque monkeys as models for human visual systems. Fixational eye movements of monkeys are similar to those of humans but they are more often vertically biased and spatially more dispersed. Eye movements scatter stimuli from their intended retinal locations, increase variability of neuronal responses, inflate estimates of receptive field size, and decrease measures of response amplitude. They also bias against successful stimulation of extremely selective cells. Compensating for eye movements reduced these errors and revealed a fine-grained motion pathway from V1 feeding the cortical ventral stream. Compensation is a useful tool for the experimenter, but rather than compensating for eye movements, the brain utilizes them as part of its input. The saccades and drifts that occur during fixation selectively activate different types of V1 neurons. Cells that prefer slower speeds respond during the drift periods with maintained discharges and tend to have smaller receptive fields that are selective for sign of contrast. They are well suited to code small details of the image and to enable our fine detailed vision. Cells that prefer higher speeds fire transient bursts of spikes when the receptive field leaves, crosses, or lands on a stimulus, but only the most transient ones (about one-third of our sample) failed to respond during drifts. Voluntary and fixational saccades had very similar effects, including the presence of a biphasic extraretinal modulation that interacted with stimulus-driven responses. Saccades evoke synchronous bursts that can enhance visibility but these bursts may also participate in the visual masking that contributes to saccadic suppression. Study of the small eye movements of fixation may illuminate some of the big problems in vision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
| Copyright of Vision Research is the property of Pergamon Press - An Imprint of Elsevier Science and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.) | |
| Database: | Engineering Source |
Be the first to leave a comment!
