Several recent studies have investigated advanced preparation of oculomotor programs after training to make saccades to a specific location in space. However, in natural visual scenes, we seldom know the precise stimulus location, rather, we often know the general area where target of interest may appear. Here, we investigated how human saccadic reaction time (SRT) and saccade final landing position may be affected by training to attend to an area where a target will appear. Additionally, we looked at how training to an area of one size may influence eye movements to targets presented in a larger area. Subjects were trained to attend to an area-cue of 6° in diameter, always presented in the same quadrant of the visual field, at the same spatial coordinates. During training, targets were presented at random locations inside the cued area. After training, targets were presented inside an area-cue (except for a few catch trials) of either the same size or of a larger size (i.e. 10° diameter). Results show that training-related saccades were directed toward individually distinctive preferred regions inside the trained area, and towards identical regions in relative coordinates inside the larger 10° area. Importantly, training-related saccades were mostly in the anticipatory range, a large proportion of which was followed by the corrective second saccades directed towards the target. Our findings suggest that anticipatory saccades should be considered in the assessment of training-related changes in oculomotor preparation of saccadic programming.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.100209 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | Savina, Olga. |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Science (Division of Neuroscience.) |
| Rights | © Olga Savina, 2007 |
| Relation | alephsysno: 002652791, proquestno: AAIMR38434, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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