Pre-saccadic remapping relies on dynamics of spatial attention

Each saccade shifts the projections of the visual scene on the retina. It has been proposed that the receptive fields of neurons in oculomotor areas are predictively remapped to account for these shifts. While remapping of the whole visual scene seems prohibitively complex, selection by attention may limit these processes to a subset of attended locations. Because attentional selection consumes time, remapping of attended locations should evolve in time, too. In our study, we cued a spatial location by presenting an attention-capturing cue at different times before a saccade and constructed maps of attentional allocation across the visual field. We observed no remapping of attention when the cue appeared shortly before saccade. In contrast, when the cue appeared sufficiently early before saccade, attentional resources were reallocated precisely to the remapped location. Our results show that pre-saccadic remapping takes time to develop suggesting that it relies on the spatial and temporal dynamics of spatial attention.

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Pre-saccadic remapping relies on dynamics of spatial attention

10.1101/293886 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Martin Szinte ◽

Donatas Jonikaitis ◽

Dragan Rangelov ◽

Heiner Deubel

Keyword(s):

Visual Attention ◽

Temporal Dynamics ◽

Receptive Fields ◽

Spatial Location ◽

Visual Scene ◽

Attentional Allocation ◽

Attentional Resources ◽

Attentional Process ◽

Spatial And Temporal Dynamics ◽

Saccadic Remapping

SummaryEach eye movement shifts the projections of the visual scene on the retina. It has been proposed that the receptive fields of neurons in oculomotor areas are remapped pre-saccadically to account for these shifts. While remapping of the whole visual scene seems prohibitively complex, selection by visual attention may limit these processes to a subset of attended locations. Because attentional selection consumes time, remapping of attended locations should evolve in time, too. In our study, we cued a spatial location by presenting an attention capturing cue at different times before a saccade and constructed detailed maps of attentional allocation across the visual field. We observed no remapping when the cue appeared shortly before saccade. In contrast, when the cue appeared sufficiently early before saccade, attentional resources were reallocated to the remapped location. Our results suggest that pre-saccadic remapping is an attentional process relying on the spatial and temporal dynamics of visual attention.

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Occipitoparietal alpha-band responses to the graded allocation of top-down spatial attention

Journal of Neurophysiology ◽

10.1152/jn.00654.2013 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 112 (6) ◽

pp. 1307-1316 ◽

Cited By ~ 14

Author(s):

Isabel Dombrowe ◽

Claus C. Hilgetag

Keyword(s):

Visual Field ◽

Spatial Attention ◽

Brain Regions ◽

Alpha Band ◽

Top Down ◽

Attentional Resources ◽

Parietal Lobes ◽

Visual Spatial ◽

Entire Visual Field ◽

Band Activity

The voluntary, top-down allocation of visual spatial attention has been linked to changes in the alpha-band of the electroencephalogram (EEG) signal measured over occipital and parietal lobes. In the present study, we investigated how occipitoparietal alpha-band activity changes when people allocate their attentional resources in a graded fashion across the visual field. We asked participants to either completely shift their attention into one hemifield, to balance their attention equally across the entire visual field, or to attribute more attention to one-half of the visual field than to the other. As expected, we found that alpha-band amplitudes decreased stronger contralaterally than ipsilaterally to the attended side when attention was shifted completely. Alpha-band amplitudes decreased bilaterally when attention was balanced equally across the visual field. However, when participants allocated more attentional resources to one-half of the visual field, this was not reflected in the alpha-band amplitudes, which just decreased bilaterally. We found that the performance of the participants was more strongly reflected in the coherence between frontal and occipitoparietal brain regions. We conclude that low alpha-band amplitudes seem to be necessary for stimulus detection. Furthermore, complete shifts of attention are directly reflected in the lateralization of alpha-band amplitudes. In the present study, a gradual allocation of visual attention across the visual field was only indirectly reflected in the alpha-band activity over occipital and parietal cortexes.

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Visual pursuit behavior in mice maintains the pursued prey on the retinal region with least optic flow

eLife ◽

10.7554/elife.70838 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 10 ◽

Author(s):

Carl D Holmgren ◽

Paul Stahr ◽

Damian J Wallace ◽

Kay-Michael Voit ◽

Emily J Matheson ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Visual Field ◽

Optic Flow ◽

Prey Capture ◽

Ganglion Cells ◽

Spatial Location ◽

Visual Scene ◽

Temporal Part ◽

Predator Detection ◽

Density Region ◽

Freely Moving

Mice have a large visual field that is constantly stabilized by vestibular ocular reflex (VOR) driven eye rotations that counter head-rotations. While maintaining their extensive visual coverage is advantageous for predator detection, mice also track and capture prey using vision. However, in the freely moving animal quantifying object location in the field of view is challenging. Here, we developed a method to digitally reconstruct and quantify the visual scene of freely moving mice performing a visually based prey capture task. By isolating the visual sense and combining a mouse eye optic model with the head and eye rotations, the detailed reconstruction of the digital environment and retinal features were projected onto the corneal surface for comparison, and updated throughout the behavior. By quantifying the spatial location of objects in the visual scene and their motion throughout the behavior, we show that the prey image consistently falls within a small area of the VOR-stabilized visual field. This functional focus coincides with the region of minimal optic flow within the visual field and consequently area of minimal motion-induced image-blur, as during pursuit mice ran directly toward the prey. The functional focus lies in the upper-temporal part of the retina and coincides with the reported high density-region of Alpha-ON sustained retinal ganglion cells.

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Spreading pre-saccadic attentional resources without trade-off

10.1101/187518 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Michael Puntiroli ◽

Heiner Deubel ◽

Martin Szinte

Keyword(s):

Temporal Dynamics ◽

Receptive Fields ◽

Limited Resources ◽

Saccade Target ◽

Orientation Sensitivity ◽

Trade Off ◽

Attentional Resources ◽

Visible Target ◽

Spatio Temporal ◽

Spatial Area

SummaryWhen preparing a saccade, attentional resources are focused at the saccade target and its immediate vicinity. Here we show that this does not hold true when saccades are prepared towards a recently extinguished target. We obtained detailed maps of orientation sensitivity when participants prepared a saccade toward a target that either remained on the screen or disappeared before the eyes moved. We found that attention was mainly focused at the immediate surround of the visible target and increasingly spread to more peripheral locations as a function of the delay between the target’s disappearance and the saccade. Interestingly, this spread was accompanied by an overall increase in sensitivity, speaking against a dilution of limited resources over a larger spatial area. We hypothesize that these results reflect the behavioral consequences of the spatio-temporal dynamics of visual receptive fields in the presence and in the absence a structured visual cue.

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Modulation of shifting receptive field activity in frontal eye field by visual salience

Journal of Neurophysiology ◽

10.1152/jn.01054.2010 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 106 (3) ◽

pp. 1179-1190 ◽

Cited By ~ 22

Author(s):

Wilsaan M. Joiner ◽

James Cavanaugh ◽

Robert H. Wurtz

Keyword(s):

Visual Field ◽

Receptive Field ◽

Visual Stimulation ◽

Receptive Fields ◽

Spatial Location ◽

Substantial Contribution ◽

Frontal Eye Field ◽

Central Visual Field ◽

Eye Field ◽

The Stability

In the monkey frontal eye field (FEF), the sensitivity of some neurons to visual stimulation changes just before a saccade. Sensitivity shifts from the spatial location of its current receptive field (RF) to the location of that field after the saccade is completed (the future field, FF). These shifting RFs are thought to contribute to the stability of visual perception across saccades, and in this study we investigated whether the salience of the FF stimulus alters the magnitude of FF activity. We reduced the salience of the usually single flashed stimulus by adding other visual stimuli. We isolated 171 neurons in the FEF of 2 monkeys and did experiments on 50 that had FF activity. In 30% of these, that activity was higher before salience was reduced by adding stimuli. The mean magnitude reduction was 16%. We then determined whether the shifting RFs were more frequent in the central visual field, which would be expected if vision across saccades were only stabilized for the visual field near the fovea. We found no evidence of any skewing of the frequency of shifting receptive fields (or the effects of salience) toward the central visual field. We conclude that the salience of the FF stimulus makes a substantial contribution to the magnitude of FF activity in FEF. In so far as FF activity contributes to visual stability, the salience of the stimulus is probably more important than the region of the visual field in which it falls for determining which objects remain perceptually stable across saccades.

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Spatial Frequency and Selective Attention to Spatial Location

Perception ◽

10.1068/p160103 ◽

1987 ◽

Vol 16 (1) ◽

pp. 103-111 ◽

Cited By ~ 20

Author(s):

Gordon L Shulman ◽

James Wilson

Keyword(s):

Visual Field ◽

Selective Attention ◽

Spatial Frequency ◽

Spatial Attention ◽

Spatial Location ◽

Peripheral Visual Field ◽

Low Frequencies ◽

Full Field ◽

High Frequencies ◽

Probe Technique

The effect of spatial attention on the detectability of gratings of different spatial frequency was measured using a probe technique. Three experiments are reported in which the detectability of full-field probe gratings was measured while subjects analyzed stimuli presented in either the central or the peripheral visual field. Selective attention to peripheral stimuli produced a facilitation at low frequencies and a decrement at high frequencies. These effects disappeared under forced-choice presentation.

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Freely-moving mice visually pursue prey using a retinal area with least optic flow

10.1101/2021.06.15.448520 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Carl D Holmgren ◽

Paul Stahr ◽

Damian J Wallace ◽

Kay-Michael Voit ◽

Emily J Matheson ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Visual Field ◽

Optic Flow ◽

Prey Capture ◽

Ganglion Cells ◽

Spatial Location ◽

Visual Scene ◽

Temporal Part ◽

Predator Detection ◽

Density Region ◽

Freely Moving

Mice have a large visual field that is constantly stabilized by vestibular ocular reflex driven eye rotations that counter head-rotations. While maintaining their extensive visual coverage is advantageous for predator detection, mice also track and capture prey using vision. However, in the freely moving animal quantifying object location in the field of view is challenging. Here, we developed a method to digitally reconstruct and quantify the visual scene of freely moving mice performing a visually based prey capture task. By isolating the visual sense and combining a mouse eye optic model with the head and eye rotations, the detailed reconstruction of the digital environment and retinal features were projected onto the corneal surface for comparison, and updated throughout the behavior. By quantifying the spatial location of objects in the visual scene and their motion throughout the behavior, we show that the image of the prey is maintained within a small area, the functional focus, in the upper-temporal part of the retina. This functional focus coincides with a region of minimal optic flow in the visual field and consequently minimal motion-induced image blur during pursuit, as well as the reported high density-region of Alpha-ON sustained retinal ganglion cells.

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Alpha-Band Oscillations Enable Spatially and Temporally Resolved Tracking of Covert Spatial Attention

Psychological Science ◽

10.1177/0956797617699167 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 28 (7) ◽

pp. 929-941 ◽

Cited By ~ 67

Author(s):

Joshua J. Foster ◽

David W. Sutterer ◽

John T. Serences ◽

Edward K. Vogel ◽

Edward Awh

Keyword(s):

Visual Search ◽

Spatial Attention ◽

Time Course ◽

Temporal Dynamics ◽

Brain Activity ◽

Alpha Activity ◽

Covert Attention ◽

Spatial Orienting ◽

Spatial And Temporal Dynamics ◽

Processing Resources

Covert spatial attention is essential for humans’ ability to direct limited processing resources to the relevant aspects of visual scenes. A growing body of evidence suggests that rhythmic neural activity in the alpha frequency band (8–12 Hz) tracks the spatial locus of covert attention, which suggests that alpha activity is integral to spatial attention. However, extant work has not provided a compelling test of another key prediction: that alpha activity tracks the temporal dynamics of covert spatial orienting. In the current study, we examined the time course of spatially specific alpha activity after central cues and during visual search. Critically, the time course of this activity tracked trial-by-trial variations in orienting latency during visual search. These findings provide important new evidence for the link between rhythmic brain activity and covert spatial attention, and they highlight a powerful approach for tracking the spatial and temporal dynamics of this core cognitive process.

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