Eye movements elicited by transparent stimuli

A transparent motion condition occurs when two different motion vectors appear at the same region of an image. Such transparency during self-motion has shown demonstrable effects on perception and on the underlying neurophysiology in the cortical and subcortical structures of primates. Presumably such stimulus conditions also influence oculomotor behavior. We investigated smooth-pursuit performance, using a transparent stimulus consisting of two oppositely-moving patterns. We found slight reduction in the mean eye velocity tracking a transparent pattern, compared with that when tracking a unidirectional pattern. Additionally, we investigated the behavior of the optokinetic system to transparency, demonstrating that it elicits antagonistic optokinetic nystagmus, with distinctly reduced gain of the slow phases. Furthermore, we observed, during optokinetic stabilization of transparent stimuli, directional dominances demonstrating that subjects preferably followed one direction. Presenting a transparent stimulus with oppositely moving patterns and different velocities we found a general velocity dominance demonstrating that patterns with a certain velocity are preferred. Performing all experiments under dichoptic conditions produced results comparable with those found under transparent stimulus conditions.