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The global effect for antisaccades

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Abstract

In the global effect, prosaccades are deviated to a position intermediate between two targets or between a distractor and a target, which may reflect spatial averaging in a map encoded by the superior colliculus. Antisaccades differ from prosaccades in that they dissociate the locations of the stimulus and goal and generate weaker collicular activity. We used these antisaccade properties to determine whether the global effect was generated in stimulus or goal computations, and whether the global effect would be larger for antisaccades, as predicted by collicular averaging. In the first two experiments, human subjects performed antisaccades while distractors were placed in the vicinity of either the stimulus or the saccadic goal. Global effects occurred only for goal-related and not for stimulus-related distractors, indicating that this effect emerges from interactions with motor representations. In the last experiment, subjects performed prosaccades and antisaccades with and without goal-related distractors. When the results were adjusted for differences in response latency, the global effect for rapid responses was three to four times larger for antisaccades than for prosaccades. Finally, we compared our findings with predictions from collicular models, to quantitatively test the spatial averaging hypothesis: we found that our results were consistent with the predictions of a collicular model. We conclude that the antisaccade global effect shows properties compatible with spatial averaging in collicular maps and likely originates in layers with neural activity related to goal rather than stimulus representations.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by CIHR grant MOP-81270 and presented at the European Conference on Eye Movements, Marseille, 2011. JB was supported by a Canada Research Chair.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Human Vision and Eye Movement Laboratory, Departments of Medicine (Neurology), Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, University of British Columbia, Third floor, VGH Eye Care Center, 2550 Willow Street, Vancouver, BC, V5Z 3N9, Canada

    Jayalakshmi Viswanathan & Jason J. S. Barton

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  1. Jayalakshmi Viswanathan
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  2. Jason J. S. Barton
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Correspondence to Jayalakshmi Viswanathan.

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Viswanathan, J., Barton, J.J.S. The global effect for antisaccades. Exp Brain Res 225, 247–259 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-012-3366-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-012-3366-3

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