Perceptual evidence for saccadic updating of color stimuli

In retinotopically organized areas of the macaque visual cortex, neurons have been found that shift their receptive fields before a saccade to their postsaccadic position. This saccadic remapping has been interpreted as a mechanism contributing to perceptual stability of space across eye movements. So far, there is only limited evidence for similar mechanisms that support perceptual stability of visual objects by remapping the representation of object features across saccades. In our present study, we investigated whether color stimuli presented before a saccade affected the perception of color stimuli at the same spatial position after the saccade. We found that the perceived hue of a postsaccadically flashed stimulus was systematically shifted toward the color of a presaccadically presented stimulus. This finding would be in accordance with a saccadic remapping process that preactivates, prior to a saccade, the neurons that represent a stimulus after the saccade at this very location. Such a remapping of visual object features could contribute to the stable perception of the visual world across saccades.