Poster Session: Dynamic visual processing in post-saccadic V1 visual responses of the marmoset monkey.

Abstract

All animals with image-forming eyes sample visual information through a "saccade and fixate" pattern of eye movements (Land and Nilsson, 2012). Here, we investigated how perisaccadic neural responses during free-viewing of natural images relate to the tuning properties of neurons in primary visual cortex (V1). We recorded from V1 in two marmoset monkeys using linear arrays as they freely viewed full-field natural scenes. We found that on average neural responses time-locked to saccade onset exhibited an early suppression followed by a post-saccadic rebound in excitatory activity. To determine whether the latency of these saccade dynamics varied with neural tuning properties we mapped tuning for spatial and temporal frequency, and orientation selectivity. In those trials marmosets free-viewed flashed full-field gratings that varied in spatial frequency and orientation. Among the neurons with significant orientation tuning, we observe a significant correlation between spatial frequency preference and the latency of post-saccadic rebound, with neurons tuned to higher spatial frequencies responding later. These results support the idea that neural responses during the saccade-fixation cycle follow coarse-to-fine distinctions proposed to operate in early visual processing (Burr, 1981; Watt, 1987; Hedge, 2008, Boi et al., 2017).