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Maintenance of visual stability in the human posterior parietal cortex
1Department of Psychology, Social Science Centre, University of Western Ontario, Room 6256, London, Ontario, Canada. audachang@gmail.com
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
|February 7, 2007
Summary
The posterior parietal cortex (PPC) plays a key role in visual stability, maintaining stable perceptions during eye movements. Disrupting the PPC with transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) impairs detecting visual displacements near saccades.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Science
- Visual Perception
Background:
- Visual stability is crucial for coherent perception despite saccadic eye movements.
- The posterior parietal cortex (PPC) is implicated in spatial remapping and visual stability.
- Previous evidence is indirect, relying on neuroimaging and lesion studies.
Purpose of the Study:
- To directly investigate the PPC's role in visual stability.
- To determine if PPC disruption affects perisaccadic visual perception.
Main Methods:
- Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) applied over the PPC.
- Participants performed a perisaccadic displacement detection task.
- Control TMS site (frontal) and control tasks (attention, apparent motion) were used.
Main Results:
- TMS over the PPC, but not a frontal site, reduced sensitivity to visual displacement before contralateral saccades.
- This effect was specific to the timing and direction of saccades.
- Impaired attention or apparent motion perception did not explain the results.
Conclusions:
- The PPC is critical for maintaining visual stability during saccades.
- Noisy spatial representations in the PPC around saccade onset contribute to saccadic suppression of displacement (SSD).
- This mechanism may prevent conscious awareness of visual instability near saccades.
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