Smooth pursuit eye movements and motion perception share motion signals in slow and fast motion mechanisms.

Abstract

Pursuit eye movements correlate with perceived motion in both velocity and direction, even without retinal motion. Cortical cells in the monkey medial temporal region generate signals for initiating pursuit eye movements and respond to retinal motion for perception. However, recent studies suggest multiple motion processes, fast and slow, even for low-level motion. Here we investigated whether the relationship with pursuit eye movements is different for fast and slow motion processes, using a motion aftereffect technique with superimposed low- and high-spatial-frequency gratings. A previous study showed that the low- and high-spatial-frequency gratings adapt the fast and slow motion processes, respectively, and that a static test probes the slow motion process and a flicker test probes the fast motion process (Shioiri & Matsumiya, 2009). In the present study, an adaptation stimulus was composed of two gratings with different spatial frequencies and orientations but the same temporal frequency, moving in the orthogonal direction of ±45° from the vertical. We measured the directions of perceived motion and pursuit eye movements to a test stimulus presented after motion adaptation with changing relative contrasts of the two adapting gratings. Pursuit eye movements were observed in the same direction as that of the motion aftereffects, independent of the relative contrasts of the two adapting gratings, for both the static and flicker tests. These results suggest that pursuit eye movements and perception share motion signals in both slow and fast motion processes.