Effects of Retinal Position on the Visuo-Motor Adaptation of Visual Stability in a Virtual Environment

Abstract

Although the retinal image changes a great deal with the movement of our head or eyes, we perceive a stable world (a phenomenon known as visual stability or position constancy). Visual stability adaptively changes for each new combination of vision and head motion, or to compensate for manipulated visuo-motor gain. This study aims to investigate the effects of retinal positions on visuo-motor adaptation and to discuss the neural mechanisms involved. I found that visuo-motor adaptation occurred, and was transferable from right to left visual fields (Experiment 1), between the upper and lower visual fields (Experiment 2), and between the central and peripheral visual fields (Experiment 4), and that for the left visual field (Experiment 1) and the large visual field (Experiment 3) visuo-motor adaptations were effective. The dominance of the central vision was found in Experiment 3 but not found in Experiment 4. These results suggest that the visuo-motor adaptation of visual stability was not specific to the retinal location, but is processed by a relatively high level of the perceptual system.