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Latency difference, not spatial extrapolation

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Abstract

The inevitable neural delays involved in processing visual information should cause the perceived location of a moving stimulus to lag significantly behind its actual location. However, Nijhawan1,2,3 has proposed that the visual system corrects the perceived location of the moving stimulus by extrapolating it along the trajectory of motion, so that the stimulus is perceived at its expected actual location. We provide new evidence to the contrary, demonstrating that the visual system does not compensate for neural delays but simply shows a reduced delay for moving stimuli.

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Figure 1: Locations of flashes that are perceived as aligned with a moving bar.

References

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by AFOSR 970407 and JSPS Research Fellowships for Young Scientists. Our thanks to Patrick Cavanagh for comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Harvard University, 33 Kirkland Street, Cambridge, 02138, Massachusetts, USA

    David Whitney & Ikuya Murakami

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  1. David Whitney
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  2. Ikuya Murakami
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Correspondence to David Whitney.

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Whitney, D., Murakami, I. Latency difference, not spatial extrapolation. Nat Neurosci 1, 656–657 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/3659

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/3659

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