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Perception of Intra-saccadic Motion

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Dynamics of Visual Motion Processing

Abstract

A typical saccadic eye movement lasts about 40 ms. During this short period of time, the image of the stationary world around us rapidly moves on the retina with a complex accelerating and decelerating profile. The reason why this 40 ms retinal motion flow does not elicit motion perception in everyday life is an issue that has received considerable interest. The present chapter first presents a brief history of the main ideas and experiments bearing on this issue since the seventies. Some key experimental paradigms and results in psychophysics are then described in detail. Finally, some suggestions for future investigations, both psychophysical and physiological, are made. A major goal of the chapter is to pinpoint some fundamental confusions that are often encountered in the literature. It is hoped that understanding these confusions will help identify more clearly the theoretical points – among which the role of temporal masking – on which scientists strongly disagree.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    It should noted that this intra-saccadic manipulation is not a necessity. Ideally, these experiments should be carried out in the following way : the pre-saccadic target should be extinguished just before saccade onset and then displayed again right after saccade offset with a spatial shift. This would actually be the cleanest way of investigating the trans-saccadic integration issue, but it is currently impossible to perform this manipulation online because of technical limitations.

  2. 2.

    The absence of a control for temporal masking effects is particularly annoying as illustrated by a finding that was emphasized in Thiele et al. (2002). The authors described a small subset of neurons that seemed to reverse their direction-selectivity only in the active condition. However, we already noted that this reversal response was much too late (it peaked 150 ms after saccade onset) to be interpreted as the result of an anticipatory suppressive extra-retinal influence (Castet et al. 2002). Moreover, Price et al. (2005) found no evidence for this reversal in direction tuning when analysing responses within 25–75 ms after saccade onset.

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Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Frédéric Chavane for his helpful comments concerning the possible physiological factors influencing retinal activity during saccades.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dynamics of Visual Perception and Action, Institut de Neurosciences Cognitives de la Méditerranée, CNRS and Université de la Méditerranée, 31 Chemin Joseph Aiguier, 13402, Marseille, France

    Eric Castet

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  1. Eric Castet
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Correspondence to Eric Castet .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Hertie Inst. Klinische Gehirnforschung, Abt. Neurodegenerative Krankheiten, Universität Tübingen, Otfried-Müller-Str. 27, Tübingen, 72076, Germany

    Uwe J. Ilg

  2. CNRS, Inst. Neurosciences Cognitives de la, Université de la Méditerranée, Chemin Joseph Aiguier 31, Marseille CX 20, 13402, France

    Guillaume S. Masson

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Castet, E. (2009). Perception of Intra-saccadic Motion. In: Ilg, U., Masson, G. (eds) Dynamics of Visual Motion Processing. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0781-3_10

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