Smooth Pursuit Over a Structured Background: The Effects of Temporal and Spatial Changes in Target and Background

Subjects were instructed to pursue a horizontally moving target in the dark and over a structured background. In agreement with the literature, the smooth pursuit gain over the background was slightly lower (9%) than the pursuit gain in the absence of the background. The effects of the background on pursuit were enhanced by using tachistoscopic presentation to degrade the quality of the pursuit target. Independent target and background motions enabled smooth eye movements induced by the background to be directly quantified. As target presentation became more intermittent optokinetic, or passive, slow eye movements, driven by the background, became more prominent in the responses. Active and passive slow eye movement drives were quantified, as the frequencies, phase and mutual proximity of the target and background were varied. Active pursuit gain was dependent on all of the background properties investigated.

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