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Presaccadic attention enhances contrast sensitivity, but not at the upper vertical meridian

Visual performance has striking polar performance asymmetries: At a fixed eccentricity, it is better along the horizontal than vertical meridian and the lower than upper vertical meridian. These asymmetries are not alleviated by covert exogenous or endogenous attention, but have been studied exclusi...

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Autores principales: Hanning, Nina M., Himmelberg, Marc M., Carrasco, Marisa
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8850791/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35198902
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2022.103851
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author Hanning, Nina M.
Himmelberg, Marc M.
Carrasco, Marisa
author_facet Hanning, Nina M.
Himmelberg, Marc M.
Carrasco, Marisa
author_sort Hanning, Nina M.
collection PubMed
description Visual performance has striking polar performance asymmetries: At a fixed eccentricity, it is better along the horizontal than vertical meridian and the lower than upper vertical meridian. These asymmetries are not alleviated by covert exogenous or endogenous attention, but have been studied exclusively during eye fixation. However, a major driver of everyday attentional orienting is saccade preparation, during which attention automatically shifts to the future eye fixation. This presaccadic attention shift is considered strong and compulsory, and relies on different neural computations and substrates than covert attention. Thus, we asked: Can presaccadic attention compensate for the ubiquitous performance asymmetries observed during eye fixation? Our data replicate polar performance asymmetries during fixation and document the same asymmetries during saccade preparation. Crucially, however, presaccadic attention enhanced contrast sensitivity at the horizontal and lower vertical meridian, but not at the upper vertical meridian. Thus, instead of attenuating performance asymmetries, presaccadic attention exacerbates them.
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spelling pubmed-88507912022-02-22 Presaccadic attention enhances contrast sensitivity, but not at the upper vertical meridian Hanning, Nina M. Himmelberg, Marc M. Carrasco, Marisa iScience Article Visual performance has striking polar performance asymmetries: At a fixed eccentricity, it is better along the horizontal than vertical meridian and the lower than upper vertical meridian. These asymmetries are not alleviated by covert exogenous or endogenous attention, but have been studied exclusively during eye fixation. However, a major driver of everyday attentional orienting is saccade preparation, during which attention automatically shifts to the future eye fixation. This presaccadic attention shift is considered strong and compulsory, and relies on different neural computations and substrates than covert attention. Thus, we asked: Can presaccadic attention compensate for the ubiquitous performance asymmetries observed during eye fixation? Our data replicate polar performance asymmetries during fixation and document the same asymmetries during saccade preparation. Crucially, however, presaccadic attention enhanced contrast sensitivity at the horizontal and lower vertical meridian, but not at the upper vertical meridian. Thus, instead of attenuating performance asymmetries, presaccadic attention exacerbates them. Elsevier 2022-02-01 /pmc/articles/PMC8850791/ /pubmed/35198902 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2022.103851 Text en © 2022 The Authors https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Hanning, Nina M.
Himmelberg, Marc M.
Carrasco, Marisa
Presaccadic attention enhances contrast sensitivity, but not at the upper vertical meridian
title Presaccadic attention enhances contrast sensitivity, but not at the upper vertical meridian
title_full Presaccadic attention enhances contrast sensitivity, but not at the upper vertical meridian
title_fullStr Presaccadic attention enhances contrast sensitivity, but not at the upper vertical meridian
title_full_unstemmed Presaccadic attention enhances contrast sensitivity, but not at the upper vertical meridian
title_short Presaccadic attention enhances contrast sensitivity, but not at the upper vertical meridian
title_sort presaccadic attention enhances contrast sensitivity, but not at the upper vertical meridian
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8850791/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35198902
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2022.103851
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