Privileged visual processing of the straight-ahead direction in humans

Durand, Jean-Baptiste; Camors, Damien; Trotter, Yves; Celebrini, Simona

doi:10.1167/12.6.34

Cited by 20 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 56 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The presence of eye position signals in these areas supports this view 2, 37-39 . Similarly, our conclusions are compatible with other purported roles for eye-position information in V1, including the prioritization of visual signals arising from directly in front of an observer's body 3,40 , and the stabilization of image representations during fixational eye movements [41][42][43][44] .…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

An intrinsic neural eye tracker in primary visual cortex

Morris

Krekelberg

2018

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Humans and other primates rely on eye movements to explore visual scenes and to track moving objects. As a result, the image that is projected onto the retina -and propagated throughout the visual cortical hierarchy -is almost constantly changing and makes little sense without taking into account the momentary direction of gaze. How is this achieved in the visual system? Here we show that in primary visual cortex (V1), the earliest stage of cortical vision, neural representations carry an embedded "eye tracker" that signals the direction of gaze associated with each image. Using chronically implanted multi-electrode arrays, we recorded the activity of neurons in V1 during tasks requiring fast (exploratory) and slow (pursuit) eye movements. Neurons were stimulated with flickering, full-field luminance noise at all times. As in previous studies 1-4 , we observed neurons that were sensitive to gaze direction during fixation, despite comparable stimulation of their receptive fields. We trained a decoder to translate neural activity into metric estimates of (stationary) gaze direction. This decoded signal not only tracked the eye accurately during fixation, but also during fast and slow eye movements, even though the decoder had not been exposed to data from these behavioural states. Moreover, this signal lagged the real eye by approximately the time it took for new visual information to travel from the retina to cortex. Using simulations, we show that this V1 eye position signal could be used to take into account the sensory consequences of eye movements and map the fleeting positions of objects on the retina onto their stable position in the world.During everyday vision, fast eye movements known as 'saccades' shift the line of sight to place the high-resolution fovea onto objects of interest. These movements are complemented by slower, smooth eye rotations used to track moving objects (e.g. a bird in flight) or to lock gaze on an object during locomotion 5 . Though essential, these movements have stark consequences for the retina's view of the world: objects that are stationary appear to jump or move, and objects that are in motion travel along grossly distorted trajectories (Fig 1). These phenomena reflect the fact that visual input arrives to the nervous system in an eye-centred (or retinal) coordinate system, in which objects evoke activity within a local patch of photoreceptors and ganglion cells (i.e. as a place code). Our perception of the world, however, is entirely different: objects do not appear to change positions every time we move our eyes, and we have no trouble planning actions toward them. This suggests that the visual system uses internal knowledge of eye position (and

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

An intrinsic neural eye tracker in primary visual cortex

Morris

Krekelberg

2018

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Another possibility is that the visual map incoporates oculoproprioception, so that a distortion of this signal causes a systematic error in locating visual targets relative to the body. Visual stimuli presented nearer the hand (Reed, Grubb, & Steele, 2006), the head midline (Durand, Camors, Trotter, & Celebrini, 2012;Durand, Trotter, & Celebrini, 2010), or the trunk midline (Grubb, Reed, Bate, Garza, & Roberts, 2008) have a privileged access to neural processing resources compared with visual stimuli presented elsewhere. A mislocalization of the visual stimuli relative to these landmarks could, in our previous studies, have changed their neural processing priority.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Role of Oculoproprioception in Coding the Locus of Attention

Odoj

Balslev

2015

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract■ The most common neural representations for spatial attention encode locations retinotopically, relative to center of gaze. To keep track of visual objects across saccades or to orient toward sounds, retinotopic representations must be combined with information about the rotation of one's own eyes in the orbits. Although gaze input is critical for a correct allocation of attention, the source of this input has so far remained unidentified. Two main signals are available: corollary discharge (copy of oculomotor command) and oculoproprioception (feedback from extraocular muscles). Here we asked whether the oculoproprioceptive signal relayed from the somatosensory cortex contributes to coding the locus of attention. We used continuous theta burst stimulation (cTBS) over a human oculoproprioceptive area in the postcentral gyrus (S1 EYE ). S1 EYE -cTBS reduces proprioceptive processing, causing ∼1°underestimation of gaze angle. Participants discriminated visual targets whose location was cued in a nonvisual modality. Throughout the visual space, S1 EYE -cTBS shifted the locus of attention away from the cue by ∼1°, in the same direction and by the same magnitude as the oculoproprioceptive bias. This systematic shift cannot be attributed to visual mislocalization. Accuracy of open-loop pointing to the same visual targets, a function thought to rely mainly on the corollary discharge, was unchanged. We argue that oculoproprioception is selective for attention maps. By identifying a potential substrate for the coupling between eye and attention, this study contributes to the theoretical models for spatial attention. ■

show abstract

“…The two experiments differed solely in the locations of the stimuli. In the first experiment, we followed the experimental design of our previous behavioral study (Durand et al 2012) and the stimulus was presented along the horizontal meridian (i.e. at eye level) at 10° of eccentricity either to the left or to the right of ocular fixation (Fig.…”

Section: Stimulimentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In humans, a growing body of evidences also suggests that the straight-ahead direction benefits from a privileged processing in peripheral vision. Behavioral studies (Camors et al 2016;Durand et al 2012) showed that participants react faster to visual stimuli if they are located straight-ahead rather than in an eccentric position, even if their visual properties (i.e. their retinal images) are strictly identical.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Visual ERPs include a number of task-specific components, reflecting different cortical processing stages (Di Russo et al 2019). In a first experiment, we adapted the design of our previous behavioral experiments with peripheral stimuli located along the horizontal meridian (Camors et al 2016;Durand et al 2012). However, we used here large and highcontrast stimuli that are more efficient at evoking robust ERPs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Dynamics of the straight-ahead preference in human visual cortex

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The objects located straight-ahead of the body are preferentially processed by the visual system. They are more rapidly detected and evoke stronger BOLD responses in early visual areas than elements that are retinotopically identical but located at eccentric spatial positions. To characterize the dynamics of the underlying neural mechanisms, we recorded in 29 subjects the EEG responses to peripheral targets differing solely by their locations with respect to the body. Straight-ahead stimuli led to stronger responses than eccentric stimuli for several components whose latencies ranged between 70 and 350 ms after stimulus onset. The earliest effects were found at 70 ms for a component that originates from occipital areas, the contralateral P1. To determine whether the straight-ahead direction affects primary visual cortex responses, we performed an additional experiment (n = 29) specifically designed to generate two robust components, the C1 and C2, whose cortical origins are constrained within areas V1, V2 and V3. Our analyses confirmed all the results of the first experiment and also revealed that the C2 amplitude between 130 and 160 ms after stimulus onset was significantly stronger for straight-ahead stimuli. A frequency analysis of the pre-stimulus baseline revealed that gaze-driven alterations in the visual hemi-field containing the straight-ahead direction were associated with a decrease in alpha power in the contralateral hemisphere, suggesting the implication of specific neural modulations before stimulus onset. Altogether, our EEG data demonstrate that preferential responses to the straight-ahead direction can be detected in the visual cortex as early as about 70 ms after stimulus onset.

show abstract

Privileged visual processing of the straight-ahead direction in humans

Cited by 20 publications

References 56 publications

An intrinsic neural eye tracker in primary visual cortex

An intrinsic neural eye tracker in primary visual cortex

Role of Oculoproprioception in Coding the Locus of Attention

Dynamics of the straight-ahead preference in human visual cortex

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About