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Extrapolating movement without retinal motion

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Abstract

In contrast to the perception of a stationary object that is briefly flashed in the dark, a continuously visible moving object is seen as being ahead of its actual position at the time of the flash. An explanation for this simple effect, in which a stimulus moving on the retina is seen as being further along its path and not where it was in space when its signal impinged on the retina, is keenly debated1,2,3,4,5,6. We show here that this illusion is not just limited to retinal motion, and that perceptual mislocalization occurs even when stimulus motion is inferred entirely from extra-retinal information, for example by movement of the observer's head or whole body, without retinal motion. The phenomenon may therefore rely on a much more general mechanism.

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Figure 1: Recording of horizontal eye movement relative to external space, and eye movement relative to the head.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neurobiology, School of Medicine, UCLA, Los Angeles, 90095, California, USA

    John Schlag, Rick H. Cai, Andrews Dorfman, Ali Mohempour & Madeleine Schlag-Rey

Authors
  1. John Schlag
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  2. Rick H. Cai
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  3. Andrews Dorfman
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  4. Ali Mohempour
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  5. Madeleine Schlag-Rey
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Correspondence to John Schlag.

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Schlag, J., Cai, R., Dorfman, A. et al. Extrapolating movement without retinal motion. Nature 403, 38–39 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/47402

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