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Perceived motion direction during smooth pursuit eye movements

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Abstract

Although many studies have been devoted to motion perception during smooth pursuit eye movements, relatively little attention has been paid to the question of whether the compensation for the effects of these eye movements is the same across different stimulus directions. The few studies that have addressed this issue provide conflicting conclusions. We measured the perceived motion direction of a stimulus dot during horizontal ocular pursuit for stimulus directions spanning the entire range of 360°. The stimulus moved at either 3 or 8°/s. Constancy of the degree of compensation was assessed by fitting the classical linear model of motion perception during pursuit. According to this model, the perceived velocity is the result of adding an eye movement signal that estimates the eye velocity to the retinal signal that estimates the retinal image velocity for a given stimulus object. The perceived direction depends on the gain ratio of the two signals, which is assumed to be constant across stimulus directions. The model provided a good fit to the data, suggesting that compensation is indeed constant across stimulus direction. Moreover, the gain ratio was lower for the higher stimulus speed, explaining differences in results in the literature.

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Notes

  1. In this paper we will restrict ourselves to head-centric motion, assuming that the head of the observer is stationary in space. Also, when we speak of ‘the stimulus’ or ‘stimulus velocity’, we refer to a moving object that is present in the visual field during ocular pursuit of the pursuit target, not to the pursuit target.

  2. Equation 5 is equivalent to Equation (11) in Mateeff et al. (1991), with the gain ratio ε/ρ equalling their constancy K. However, they presented their equation as a measure of the degree of compensation. In our form it can be used to fit experimental data and test the linear model.

  3. Strictly speaking, if we assume that both gains are sampled from normal distributions, the gain ratio would have a Cauchy distribution. Here, however, we just show a possible effect of noise in the signals, without paying too much attention to the shape of the underlying distributions.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Dr. Herbert Hoijtink for his advice on modelling the data.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Helmholtz Institute, Department of Psychonomics, Utrecht University

    Jan L. Souman, Ignace Th. C. Hooge & Alexander H. Wertheim

  2. Heidelberglaan 2, 3584, CS, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Jan L. Souman

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  1. Jan L. Souman
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  2. Ignace Th. C. Hooge
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  3. Alexander H. Wertheim
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Correspondence to Jan L. Souman.

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Souman, J.L., Hooge, I.T.C. & Wertheim, A.H. Perceived motion direction during smooth pursuit eye movements. Exp Brain Res 164, 376–386 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-005-2261-6

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