Relative contributions of the two eyes to perceived egocentric visual direction in normal binocular vision

Abstract

Perceived egocentric direction (EVD) is based on the sensed position of the eyes in the orbit and the oculocentric visual direction (eye-centered, OVD). Previous reports indicate that in some subjects eye-position information from the two eyes contributes unequally to the perceived EVD. Findings from other studies indicate that the retinal information from the two eyes may not always contribute equally to perceived OVD. The goal of this study was to assess whether these two sources of information covary similarly within the same individuals. Open-loop pointing responses to an isolated target presented randomly at several horizontal locations were collected from 13 subjects during different magnitudes of asymmetric vergence to estimate the contribution of the position information from each eye to perceived EVD. For the same subjects, the direction at which a horizontally or vertically disparate target with different interocular contrast or luminance ratios appeared aligned with a non-disparate target estimated the relative contribution of each eye’s retinal information. The results show that the eye-position and retinal information vary similarly in most subjects, which is consistent with a modified version of Hering’s law of visual direction.