The psychophysics of the pursuit oculomotor system

When a fixation point moves under a row of identical targets at a speed of one target for each flash of a strobe, smooth apparent movement of the targets is seen (the “picket-fence illusion”). When the fixation point is removed, the eye continues to pursue the apparent target movement. Pursuit continues through small changes in target configuration, but is interrupted by a change to a very dissimilar target (such as 1 vs. x) in the middle of a row. This new method, the “pursuit-interruption method,” showed that large differences in the number of pixels in a line did not interrupt trackingif the end points of the line were preserved. Pursuit interruption by changes in line orientation(such as vs.) corresponded to the orientation bandwidth of orientation-sensitive cortical neurons. The maximum number of consecutive missing targets that does not interrupt pursuit depends on frequency of target presentation as well as on parameters of the pursuit system.

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