Gaze modulation of visual aftereffects

Physiological studies of non-human primates have suggested that the direction of gaze can modulate the gain of neuronal responses to visual stimuli in many cortical areas including V1. The neural gaze modulation is suggested to subserve the conversion from gaze-independent (eye-centered) to dependent (e.g., head-centered) representations. However, it has not been established whether the gaze modulation has significant influences on human visual perception. Here we show that gaze direction modestly but significantly modulates the magnitudes of the motion aftereffect, the tilt aftereffect and the size aftereffect. These aftereffects were stronger when the adaptation and test patterns were presented in the same gaze direction, than when they were presented in different gaze directions, even though the patterns always stimulated the same retinal location. The gaze modulation effect was not statistically significant for the post-adaptation elevation of contrast detection thresholds. The gaze modulation of visual aftereffects provides a useful psychophysical tool to analyze human cortical processes for coordinate transformations of visual space. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.