Presaccadic attention improves or impairs performance by enhancing sensitivity to higher spatial frequencies

Hsin-Hung Li,Jasmine Pan,Marisa Carrasco

doi:10.1038/s41598-018-38262-3

Abstract

Right before we move our eyes, visual performance and neural responses for the saccade target are enhanced. This effect, presaccadic attention, is considered to prioritize the saccade target and to enhance behavioral performance for the saccade target. Recent evidence has shown that presaccadic attention modulates the processing of feature information. Hitherto, it remains unknown whether presaccadic modulations on feature information are flexible, to improve performance for the task at hand, or automatic, so that they alter the featural representation similarly regardless of the task. Using a masking procedure, here we report that presaccadic attention can either improve or impair performance depending on the spatial frequency content of the visual input. These counterintuitive modulations were significant at a time window right before saccade onset. Furthermore, merely deploying covert attention within the same temporal interval without preparing a saccade did not affect performance. This study reveals that presaccadic attention not only prioritizes the saccade target, but also automatically modifies its featural representation.

Highlights

The visual system is limited by spatial resolution—the ability to discriminate two nearby points in space—that is highest at the fovea, the central area of the retina, and declines with eccentricity[1,2]
If presaccadic attention enhances high-spatial frequency (SF) visual inputs inflexibly, presaccadic attention might result in a weaker enhancement or even an impairment on performance when the target was superimposed with a mask of higher SF content
We performed an analysis of variance (ANOVA) and reported the results in Supplementary Information

Summary

Introduction

The visual system is limited by spatial resolution—the ability to discriminate two nearby points in space—that is highest at the fovea, the central area of the retina, and declines with eccentricity[1,2]. If presaccadic attention modulates SF processing by enhancing specific SF content automatically in an inflexible manner, it would either enhance or impair performance depending on the relation between the SF of the target and the SF of the mask. If presaccadic attention enhances high-SF visual inputs inflexibly, presaccadic attention might result in a weaker enhancement or even an impairment on performance when the target was superimposed with a mask of higher SF content. This is because enhancing high-SF information would lead to a stronger suppression generated by the high-SF mask. The purpose of this experiment was not to investigate the effect of endogenous covert attention, but rather to rule out its possible contribution in the presaccadic condition

Methods

Results

Conclusion