When 2 targets for pursuit eye movements move in different directions, the eye velocity follows the vector average (S. G. Lisberger & V. P. Ferrera, 1997). The present study investigates the mechanisms of target selection when observers are instructed to follow a predefined horizontal target and to ignore a moving distractor stimulus. Results show that at 140 ms after distractor onset, horizont...

We have used a new approach to study the neural decoding function that converts the population response in extrastriate area MT into estimates of target motion to drive smooth pursuit eye movement. Experiments reveal significant trial-by-trial correlations between the responses of MT neurons and the initiation of pursuit. The preponderance of significant correlations and the relatively low redu...

We used a dual-task paradigm to investigate the spatial allocation of attention during smooth pursuit. Subjects tracked one character in a translating string of characters (block letter 8's), and during maintained pursuit, one of the characters briefly changed to an E or 3. Based on the ability of subjects to correctly discriminate the probed character, we found that the primary focus of attent...

Smooth pursuit and saccades are two components of tracking eye movements. Their coordination has usually been studied by investigating latencies of pursuit onset in response to a moving target appearing simultaneously with the disappearance of the stationary fixation target. The general finding from such studies has been that latencies of saccades and pursuit are different and reflect independe...

The dramatic improvement in smooth pursuit performance seen while analyzing the pursuit target has been ascribed to attention enhancement. With a periodic constant velocity target trajectory we ran a concurrent listening condition instead, to see if this mild distraction would degrade performance. Performance improved somewhat with the listening task, suggesting that displacing attentional effo...

A recent study has shown that a range of different motion illusions occurring during smooth pursuit eye-movements can be explained as optimal percepts based on a simple model derived from the Bayesian statistical framework.

Ten-month-old infants' sensitivity to first-order motion (FOM) defined by luminance and second-order motion (SOM) defined by flickering was measured in an eye-tracking paradigm. We used a small single disc or gratings moving horizontally. Although infants could track the SOM of a small disc, they failed to exhibit smooth pursuit eye movements. They also failed to track SOM gratings with smooth ...

Motion perception is compromised at equiluminance. Because previous investigations have been primarily carried out under fixation conditions, it remains unknown whether and how equiluminant color motion comes into play in the velocity compensation for retinal image motion due to smooth pursuit eye movement. We measured the retinal image velocity required to reach subjective stationarity for a h...

The dorsolateral pontine nucleus (DLPN) and nucleus reticularis tegmenti pontis (NRTP) are basilar pontine nuclei important for control of eye movements. The aim of this study was to compare the response properties of neurons in DLPN and rostral NRTP (rNRTP) during visual, oculomotor, and vestibular testing. We tested 51 DLPN neurons that were modulated during smooth pursuit (23/51) or during m...