Remapping, Spatial Stability, and Temporal Continuity: From the Pre-Saccadic to Postsaccadic Representation of Visual
Koorosh Mirpour1, James W Bisley2
1Department of Neurobiology.
Cerebral Cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991)
|July 5, 2015
Summary
Visual perception remains stable despite eye movements thanks to predictive remapping. This neural process ensures a seamless shift between visual representations before and after saccades, maintaining spatial and temporal continuity.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Science
- Visual Perception
Background:
- The brain maintains a stable perception of the world despite constant eye movements and changing retinal input.
- Predictive remapping of neural receptive fields is a proposed mechanism for this perceptual stability.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how predictive remapping in the lateral intraparietal area contributes to perceptual stability during eye movements.
- To examine the temporal dynamics of neural representations before and after saccades.
Main Methods:
- Recorded neural activity in the lateral intraparietal area of animals performing a visual foraging task.
- Analyzed neuronal responses to stimuli presented before and after saccades.
Main Results:
- In 38% of neurons, remapping was observed, showing a rapid transition between pre- and post-saccadic representations.
- The temporal gap between the cessation of the pre-saccadic representation and the onset of the post-saccadic representation was minimal (≤30 ms).
- Some neurons and the overall population exhibited continuous representations across saccades.
Conclusions:
- The seamless temporal shift in neural representations, facilitated by predictive remapping, likely underlies the perception of a stable visual world.
- This mechanism explains how the brain integrates visual information across eye movements, ensuring spatial and temporal continuity.
