Retinotopic Memory Is More Precise Than Spatiotopic Memory
Retinotopic memory is more precise than spatiotopic memory Julie D. Golomb1 and Nancy Kanwisher McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139 Edited by Tony Movshon, New York University, New York, NY, and approved December 14, 2011 (received for review August 10, 2011) Successful visually guided behavior requires information about spa- possible that stability could be achieved on the basis of retinotopic- tiotopic (i.e., world-centered) locations, but how accurately is this plus-updating alone. information actually derived from initial retinotopic (i.e., eye-centered) Most current theories of visual stability favor some form of visual input? We conducted a spatial working memory task in which retinotopic-plus-updating, but they vary widely in how quickly, subjects remembered a cued location in spatiotopic or retinotopic automatically, or successfully this updating might occur. For coordinates while making guided eye movements during the memory example, several groups have demonstrated that locations can be delay. Surprisingly, after a saccade, subjects were significantly more rapidly “remapped,” sometimes even in anticipation of an eye accurate and precise at reporting retinotopic locations than spatiotopic movement (20–22), but a recent set of studies has argued that locations. This difference grew with each eye movement, such that updating requires not only remapping to the new location, but spatiotopic memory continued to deteriorate, whereas retinotopic also extinguishing the representation at the previous location, memory did not accumulate error. The loss in spatiotopic fidelity and this latter process may occur on a slower time scale (23, 24). is therefore not a generic consequence of eye movements, but a Moreover, it is an open question just how accurate we are at direct result of converting visual information from native retinotopic spatiotopic perception.
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