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Motion integration is anisotropic during smooth pursuit eye movements

Souto, David; Chudasama, Jayesha; Kerzel, Dirk; Johnston, Alan

Authors

David Souto

Jayesha Chudasama

Dirk Kerzel

ALAN JOHNSTON Alan.Johnston@nottingham.ac.uk
Professor of Psychology



Abstract

Smooth pursuit eye movements (pursuit) are used to minimize the retinal motion of moving objects. During pursuit, the pattern of motion on the retina carries not only information about the object movement but also reafferent information about the eye movement itself. The latter arises from the retinal flow of the stationary world in the direction opposite to the eye movement. To extract the global direction of motion of the tracked object and stationary world, the visual system needs to integrate ambiguous local motion measurements (i.e., the aperture problem). Unlike the tracked object, the stationary world’s global motion is entirely determined by the eye movement and thus can be approximately derived from motor commands sent to the eye (i.e., from an efference copy). Because retinal motion opposite to the eye movement is dominant during pursuit, different motion integration mechanisms might be used for retinal motion in the same direction and opposite to pursuit. To investigate motion integration during pursuit, we tested direction discrimination of a brief change in global object motion. The global motion stimulus was a circular array of small static apertures within which one-dimensional gratings moved. We found increased coherence thresholds and a qualitatively different reflexive ocular tracking for global motion opposite to pursuit. Both effects suggest reduced sampling of motion opposite to pursuit, which results in an impaired ability to extract coherence in motion signals in the reafferent direction. We suggest that anisotropic motion integration is an adaptation to asymmetric retinal motion patterns experienced during pursuit eye movements.

Citation

Souto, D., Chudasama, J., Kerzel, D., & Johnston, A. (2019). Motion integration is anisotropic during smooth pursuit eye movements. Journal of Neurophysiology, 121(5), 1787-1797. https://doi.org/10.1152/jn.00591.2018

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Mar 4, 2019
Online Publication Date Apr 30, 2019
Publication Date May 1, 2019
Deposit Date Aug 12, 2019
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Journal of Neurophysiology
Print ISSN 0022-3077
Electronic ISSN 1522-1598
Publisher American Physiological Society
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 121
Issue 5
Pages 1787-1797
DOI https://doi.org/10.1152/jn.00591.2018
Keywords Physiology; General Neuroscience
Public URL https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2407621
Publisher URL https://www.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/jn.00591.2018

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