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This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) All Versions of this Article: 102/3/1736    most recent 00430.2009v1 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 Google Scholar Articles by Miura, K. Articles by Kawano, K. PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Miura, K. Articles by Kawano, K.

Ocular Responses to Brief Motion of Textured Backgrounds During Smooth Pursuit in Humans

Department of Integrative Brain Science, Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

Submitted 19 May 2009; accepted in final form 11 July 2009

Abstract

We studied the effects of horizontal smooth pursuit on the ocular responses to brief vertical perturbations of textured backgrounds in humans. When the subject was fixating on a stationary target, a brief vertical perturbation of the background elicited a small tracking response. When the subject was pursuing a target moving horizontally, the same background perturbation elicited a larger response: that is, the response to vertical background perturbations was enhanced during pursuit (pursuit-related enhancement). On the other hand, the dependencies of the ocular responses on spatial frequency, temporal frequency, and stimulus contrast were similar regardless of the ongoing behavior of the subject. We also found that a low-level energy-based mechanism underlies the ocular responses to vertical perturbations of the background during fixation and smooth pursuit. We conclude that the pursuit-related enhancement is independent of the properties of visual processing for cross-axis motion of backgrounds, which suggests that this enhancement results from uniform facilitation of the visual system and/or from facilitation of visuomotor transmission downstream of the visual processing.