Abstract
Maintaining attention at a task-relevant spatial location while making eye-movements necessitates a rapid, saccade-synchronized shift of attentional modulation from the neuronal population representing the task-relevant location before the saccade to the one representing it after the saccade. Currently, the precise time at which spatial attention becomes fully allocated to the task-relevant location after the saccade remains unclear. Using a fine-grained temporal analysis of human peri-saccadic detection performance in an attention task, we show that spatial attention is fully available at the task-relevant location within 30 milliseconds after the saccade. Subjects tracked the attentional target veridically throughout our task: i.e. they almost never responded to non-target stimuli. Spatial attention and saccadic processing therefore co-ordinate well to ensure that relevant locations are attentionally enhanced soon after the beginning of each eye fixation.
Highlights
The processing of vision and visuospatial attention mostly proceeds via retinotopic representations in the brain (Cavanagh et al, 2010; Wurtz, 2008)
Since each saccadic eye-movement leads to a change in the retinotopic representation of the visual scene, maintaining attention at a task-relevant spatial location across a saccade necessitates a rapid, saccade-synchronized shift of attentional modulation from the neuronal population representing the task-relevant location before the saccade to the one representing it after the saccade (Marino and Mazer, 2016; Yao et al, 2016)
Using a fine-grained temporal analysis of human peri-saccadic detection performance in an attention task, we show that spatial attention is fully available at the task-relevant location within 30 milliseconds after the saccade
Summary
The processing of vision and visuospatial attention mostly proceeds via retinotopic representations in the brain (Cavanagh et al, 2010; Wurtz, 2008). Using a fine-grained temporal analysis of human peri-saccadic detection performance in an attention task, we show that spatial attention is fully available at the task-relevant location within 30 milliseconds after the saccade This rapid post-saccadic recovery of performance in our attention task indicates that retinotopic attentional shifts occur within the time required to recover from saccadic suppression of vision. Our eyes move discontinuously, shifting gaze rapidly from point to point to focus on different locations in the scene These eye movements are known as saccades, and during them the brain temporarily and selectively stops processing visual information. Paying attention to a relevant location in a scene across an eye movement requires the brain to shift its attentional effects from the neurons that represented that location in the scene before the saccade to the set of neurons that do so after the saccade This shift should happen rapidly and be synchronized with the eye movement.
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