Paola Binda
Post-Doc in Physiological Sciences, University of Pisa and University of Washington
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Contacts
Research laboratories
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Current research and interests
- Saccadic eye movements
- Numerosity
- Visual Attention
- Multisensory Integration
Publications
2011
Binda, P., Morrone, M. C., Ross, J. & Burr, D. C. (2011). Underestimation of perceived number at the time of saccades,Vision Res, 1 (51), 34-42. PDF
Saccadic eye movements produce transient distortions in both space and time. Mounting evidence suggests that space and time perception are linked, and associated with the perception of another important perceptual attribute, numerosity. Here we investigate the effect of saccades on the perceived numerosity of briefly presented arrays of visual elements. We report a systematic underestimation of numerosity for stimuli flashed just before or during saccades, of about 35% of the reference numerosity. The bias is observed only for relatively large arrays of visual elements, in line with the notion that a distinct perceptual mechanism is involved with enumeration of small numerosities in the 'subitizing' range. This study provides further evidence for the notion that space, time and number share common neural representations, all affected by saccades.
Knoll, J., Binda, P., Morrone, M. C. & Bremmer, F. (2011). Spatiotemporal profile of peri-saccadic contrast sensitivity,J Vis, 14 (11), PDF
Sensitivity to luminance contrast is reduced just before and during saccades (saccadic suppression), whereas sensitivity to color contrast is unimpaired peri-saccadically and enhanced post-saccadically. The exact spatiotemporal map of these perceptual effects is as yet unknown. Here, we measured detection thresholds for briefly flashed Gaussian blobs modulated in either luminance or chromatic contrast, displayed at a range of eccentricities. Sensitivity to luminance contrast was reduced peri-saccadically by a scaling factor, which was almost constant across retinal space. Saccadic suppression followed a similar time course across all tested eccentricities and was maximal shortly after the saccade onset. Sensitivity to chromatic contrast was enhanced post-saccadically at all tested locations. The enhancement was not specifically linked to the execution of saccades, as it was also observed following a displacement of retinal images comparable to that caused by a saccade. We conclude that luminance and chromatic contrast sensitivities are subject to distinct modulations at the time of saccades, resulting from independent neural processes.
2010
Lunghi, C., Binda, P. & Morrone, M. C. (2010). Touch disambiguates rivalrous perception at early stages of visual analysis,Curr Biol, 4 (20), R143-144. PDF
Binocular rivalry is a powerful tool to study human consciousness: two equally salient stimuli are imaged on the retinae, but at any given instant only one is consciously perceived, the other suppressed.The suppression takes place early, probably in V1. However, a trace of the suppressed signal has been detected along the dorsal visual pathway (BOLD responses) and demonstrated with psychophysical experiments. The suppressed image of a rotating sphere during rivalry is restored to consciousness when the observer actively controls the rotation and a similar effect on the suppressed signal has been shown for motion perception and reflexive eye movements (see Supplemental References). Here, we asked whether cross-modal sensory signals could selectively interact with rivalrous visual signals that are analyzed at a very early stage, probably V1. An auditory stimulus, when attended, can influence binocular rivalry, extending dominance times for a congruent visual stimulus. Tactile information can also disambiguate unstable visual motion and can fuse with vision to improve discrimination (e.g. slant). Our results indicate that a haptic oriented stimulus can disambiguate visual perception during binocular rivalry of gratings of orthogonal orientation, not only by prolonging dominance but also by curtailing suppression of the visual stimulus of matched orientation. The effect is selective for the spatial frequency of the stimuli, suggesting that haptic signals interact with early visual representations to enhance access to conscious perception.
Burr, D. C., Ross, J., Binda, P. & Morrone, M. C. (2010). Saccades compress space, time and number,Trends Cogn Sci, 12 (14), 528-533. PDF
It has been suggested that space, time and number are represented on a common subjective scale. Saccadic eye movements provide a fascinating test. Saccades compress the perceived magnitude of spatial separations and temporal intervals to approximately half of their true value. The question arises as to whether saccades also compress number. They do, and compression follows a very similar time course for all three attributes: it is maximal at saccadic onset and decreases to veridicality within a window of approximately 50ms. These results reinforce the suggestion of a common perceptual metric, which is probably mediated by the intraparietal cortex; they further suggest that before each saccade the common metric for all three is reset, possibly to pave the way for a fresh analysis of the post-saccadic situation.
Binda, P., Morrone, M. C. & Burr, D. C. (2010). Temporal auditory capture does not affect the time course of saccadic mislocalization of visual stimuli,J Vis, 2 (10), 7 1-13. PDF
Irrelevant sounds can "capture" visual stimuli to change their apparent timing, a phenomenon sometimes termed "temporal ventriloquism". Here we ask whether this auditory capture can alter the time course of spatial mislocalization of visual stimuli during saccades. We first show that during saccades, sounds affect the apparent timing of visual flashes, even more strongly than during fixation. However, this capture does not affect the dynamics of perisaccadic visual distortions. Sounds presented 50 ms before or after a visual bar (that change perceived timing of the bars by more than 40 ms) had no measurable effect on the time courses of spatial mislocalization of the bars, in four subjects. Control studies showed that with barely visible, low-contrast stimuli, leading, but not trailing, sounds can have a small effect on mislocalization, most likely attributable to attentional effects rather than auditory capture. These findings support previous studies showing that integration of multisensory information occurs at a relatively late stage of sensory processing, after visual representations have undergone the distortions induced by saccades.
2009
Binda, P., Cicchini, G. M., Burr, D. C. & Morrone, M. C. (2009). Spatiotemporal distortions of visual perception at the time of saccades,J Neurosci, 42 (29), 13147-13157. PDF
Both space and time are grossly distorted during saccades. Here we show that the two distortions are strongly linked, and that both could be a consequence of the transient remapping mechanisms that affect visual neurons perisaccadically. We measured perisaccadic spatial and temporal distortions simultaneously by asking subjects to report both the perceived spatial location of a perisaccadic vertical bar (relative to a remembered ruler), and its perceived timing (relative to two sounds straddling the bar). During fixation and well before or after saccades, bars were localized veridically in space and in time. In different epochs of the perisaccadic interval, temporal perception was subject to different biases. At about the time of the saccadic onset, bars were temporally mislocalized 50-100 ms later than their actual presentation and spatially mislocalized toward the saccadic target. Importantly, the magnitude of the temporal distortions co-varied with the spatial localization bias and the two phenomena had similar dynamics. Within a brief period about 50 ms before saccadic onset, stimuli were perceived with shorter latencies than at other delays relative to saccadic onset, suggesting that the perceived passage of time transiently inverted its direction. Based on this result we could predict the inversion of perceived temporal order for two briefly flashed visual stimuli. We developed a model that simulates the perisaccadic transient change of neuronal receptive fields predicting well the reported temporal distortions. The key aspects of the model are the dynamics of the "remapped" activity and the use of decoder operators that are optimal during fixation, but are not updated perisaccadically.
2007
Binda, P., Bruno, A., Burr, D. C. & Morrone, M. C. (2007). Fusion of visual and auditory stimuli during saccades: a Bayesian explanation for perisaccadic distortions,J Neurosci, 32 (27), 8525-8532. PDF
Brief stimuli presented near the onset of saccades are grossly mislocalized in space. In this study, we investigated whether the Bayesian hypothesis of optimal sensory fusion could account for the mislocalization. We required subjects to localize visual, auditory, and audiovisual stimuli at the time of saccades (compared with an earlier presented target). During fixation, vision dominates and spatially "captures" the auditory stimulus (the ventriloquist effect). But for perisaccadic presentations, auditory localization becomes more important, so the mislocalized visual stimulus is seen closer to its veridical position. The precision of the bimodal localization (as measured by localization thresholds or just-noticeable difference) was better than either the visual or acoustic stimulus presented in isolation. Both the perceived position of the bimodal stimuli and the improved precision were well predicted by assuming statistically optimal Bayesian-like combination of visual and auditory signals. Furthermore, the time course of localization was well predicted by the Bayesian approach. We present a detailed model that simulates the time-course data, assuming that perceived position is given by the sum of retinal position and a sluggish noisy eye-position signal, obtained by integrating optimally the output of two populations of neural activity: one centered at the current point of gaze, the other centered at the future point of gaze.
