Abstract
It has been showed that more attention is distributed in front compared to behind of the pursuit stimuli. Supplementary eye field (SEF) is know to be involved in the cognitive aspect of smooth pursuit system. We hypothesize that disturbing the activities of SEF would modulate the attentional distribution during pursuit. Therefore, we designed a dual task paradigm which required subjects to perform smooth pursuit and detection tasks simultaneously. In the study, a green cross moved horizontally and a red dot briefly appeared around the cross during the movement. Also, placeholders indicating possible locations of the red dot either moved with the green cross or were not presented. The subjects were required to smoothly pursue the green cross and press a button quickly upon the appearance of the red dot. Before conducting the experiment, we stimulated the SEF using TMS. We found that responses to the red dot were faster when it appeared in front compared to behind of the cross, named as frontal advantage, and the stimulation over the SEF lessened the frontal advantage. In addition, the presence of the placeholders boosted the steady-state velocity gain of the pursuit and the stimulation of the SEF reduced the velocity gain only when the placeholders were presented. These results suggest that the SEF plays a role in controlling of the feedforwad gain of the pursuit system and also influences attentional distribution during the pursuit.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2018