Weighted integration of short-term memory and sensory signals in the oculomotor system

• Published in: Journal of vision (Charlottesville, Va.) Vol. 18; no. 5; p. 16
• Main Authors: Deravet, Nicolas, Blohm, Gunnar, de Xivry, Jean-Jacques Orban, Lefèvre, Philippe
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States 01.05.2018
• ISSN: 1534-7362; 1534-7362
• DOI: 10.1167/18.5.16

Oculomotor behaviors integrate sensory and prior information to overcome sensory-motor delays and noise. After much debate about this process, reliability-based integration has recently been proposed and several models of smooth pursuit now include recurrent Bayesian integration or Kalman filtering. However, there is a lack of behavioral evidence in humans supporting these theoretical predictions. Here, we independently manipulated the reliability of visual and prior information in a smooth pursuit task. Our results show that both smooth pursuit eye velocity and catch-up saccade amplitude were modulated by visual and prior information reliability. We interpret these findings as the continuous reliability-based integration of a short-term memory of target motion with visual information, which support modeling work. Furthermore, we suggest that saccadic and pursuit systems share this short-term memory. We propose that this short-term memory of target motion is quickly built and continuously updated, and constitutes a general building block present in all sensorimotor systems.