HOME HELP FEEDBACK SUBSCRIPTIONS ARCHIVE SEARCH TABLE OF CONTENTS		QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced] Author: Keyword(s): Year:  Vol:  Page:

This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) All Versions of this Article: 101/5/2317    most recent 91248.2008v1 Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in Web of Science Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via Web of Science (2) Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Schütz, A. C. Articles by Gegenfurtner, K. R. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Schütz, A. C. Articles by Gegenfurtner, K. R.

RESEARCH-ARTICLE

Chromatic Contrast Sensitivity During Optokinetic Nystagmus, Visually Enhanced Vestibuloocular Reflex, and Smooth-Pursuit Eye Movements

Abteilung Allgemeine Psychologie, Justus-Liebig-Universität, Giessen, Germany

Submitted 24 November 2008; accepted in final form 3 March 2009

ABSTRACT

Recently we showed that sensitivity for chromatic- and high-spatial frequency luminance stimuli is enhanced during smooth-pursuit eye movements (SPEMs). Here we investigated whether this enhancement is a general property of slow eye movements. Besides SPEM there are two other classes of eye movements that operate in a similar range of eye velocities: the optokinetic nystagmus (OKN) is a reflexive pattern of alternating fast and slow eye movements elicited by wide-field visual motion and the vestibuloocular reflex (VOR) stabilizes the gaze during head movements. In a natural environment all three classes of eye movements act synergistically to allow clear central vision during self- and object motion. To test whether the same improvement of chromatic sensitivity occurs during all of these eye movements, we measured human detection performance of chromatic and luminance line stimuli during OKN and contrast sensitivity during VOR and SPEM at comparable velocities. For comparison, performance in the same tasks was tested during fixation. During the slow phase of OKN we found a similar enhancement of chromatic detection rate like that during SPEM, whereas no enhancement was observable during VOR. This result indicates similarities between slow-phase OKN and SPEM, which are distinct from VOR.