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

ABSTRACT: 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 asymm

SUBMITTER: Hanning NM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8850791 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature