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Why you should look where you are going

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Abstract

It is controversial whether head and eye movement information are required to discern locomotor heading from visual motion information1,2,3,4,5. We present a new theory of steering based on active gaze and retinal flow, which demonstrates that future paths could be judged using known properties of visual cortex neurons, without recovering current heading or integrating extra-retinal signals. This theory is consistent with the gaze-sampling behavior promoted in advanced driving instruction.

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Figure 1: Retinal flow patterns for different steering and gaze responses.
Figure 2: Nulling flow curvature with active fixation.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by UK EPSRC grant GR/L18693 and GR/L16125.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Reading, 3 Earley Gate, Reading, RG6 6AL, UK

    John P. Wann & David K. Swapp

Authors
  1. John P. Wann
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  2. David K. Swapp
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Correspondence to John P. Wann.

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Wann, J., Swapp, D. Why you should look where you are going. Nat Neurosci 3, 647–648 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/76602

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/76602

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