Integration System of Head, Eye, and Retinal Position Signals for Perceptual Direction

Abstract

This study investigates the integration system of head (-to-trunk), eye (-to-head), and retinal position signals for hand pointing. In experiment 1, subjects changed their head and eye positions and pointed at a fixated visual stimulus by using an unseen pointer. In experiment 2, subjects fixated a visual stimulus and pointed at another visual stimulus. The results show that the head and eye position signals contributed linearly to perceptual direction (experiments 1 and 2), and that the coefficients of these signals decrease with peripheral vision and are smaller than the coefficient of the retinal position signal (experiment 2). These results collectively suggest that the integration algorithm of the position signals might be described by the linear summation equation and that the retinal position signal serves a more important role than the other position signals in the visual system.