Speed of visual processing increases with eccentricity.

Full Abstract

The visual system has a duplex design to meet conflicting environmental demands:
the fovea has the resolution required to process fine spatial information, but the periphery is more sensitive to temporal properties. To investigate whether the periphery's sensitivity is partly due to the speed with which information is processed, we measured the full timecourse of visual information processing by deriving joint measures of discriminability and speed, and found that speed of information processing varies with eccentricity:
processing was faster when same-size stimuli appeared at 9 degrees than 4 degrees eccentricity, and this difference was attenuated when the 9 degrees stimuli were magnified to equate cortical representation size. At the same eccentricity, larger stimuli are processed more slowly. These temporal differences are greater than expected from neurophysiological constraints.

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Author information

Author/s: Carrasco, Marisa (M); McElree, Brian (B); Denisova, Kristina (K); Giordano, Anna Marie (AM);

Affiliation: Department of Psychology New York University, 4 Washington Place, New York, New York 10003, USA. marisa.carrasco@nyu.edu

Grants: MH57458 (Agency:United States NIMH)

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Comparative Study; Journal Article; Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.; Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.

Journal: Nature neuroscience (Nat Neurosci), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2003-Jul; vol 6 (issue 7) : pp 699-70

Dates: Created 2003/06/27; Completed 2003/08/14; Revised 2007/11/14;

PMID: 12819786, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

Comments and Corrections

ErratumIn: Nat Neurosci. 2003 Aug;6(8):899.

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