Category: Uncategorized

We’ve set a deadline of the 31st of May for submission of abstracts, but registration will be open until the day of the meeting. We also have a snazzy new flyer! 

Congratulations Soazig on the publication of “Covert attention beyond the range of eye-movements: Evidence for a dissociation between exogenous and endogenous orienting” in Cortex.

“The relationship between covert shift of attention and the oculomotor system has been the subject of numerous studies. A widely held view, known as Premotor Theory, is that covert attention depends upon activation of the oculomotor system. However, recent work has argued that Premotor Theory is only true for covert, exogenous orienting of attention and that covert endogenous orienting is largely independent of the oculomotor system. To address this issue we examined how endogenous and exogenous covert orienting of attention was affected when stimuli were presented at a location outside the range of saccadic eye movements. Results from Experiment 1 showed that exogenous covert orienting was abolished when stimuli were presented beyond the range of saccadic eye movements, but preserved when stimuli were presented within this range. In contrast, in Experiment 2 endogenous covert orienting was preserved when stimuli appeared beyond the saccadic range. Finally, Experiment 3 confirmed the observations of Exp.1 and 2. Our results demonstrate that exogenous, covert orienting is limited to the range of overt saccadic eye movements, whereas covert endogenous orienting is not. These results are consistent with a weak, exogenous-only version of Premotor Theory.”

The key finding illustrated in the figure below (taken from Experiment 3), which shows that exogenous attentional capture is abolished when the cue and target lie beyond the effective oculomotor range (i.e. the cannot become the goal of a saccadic eye movement). In contrast, endogenous orienting of attention is not subject to the same restriction.

 

Congratulations to Soazig, whose paper showing that exogenous attention is limited to the effective oculomotor range has been accepted to the Cortex special issue in honour of Bob Rafal. Great work Soazig!

Dan presented some data on visual search and visual memory in patients with Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP)  at the 1st annual Learning & Memory Processes meeting. Patients with PSP have vertical paralysis of gaze and our study showed that the  vertical gaze paralysis was associated with impairment of visual search and spatial working memory for targets on the vertical axis (see also Smith & Archibald 2018)

Smith, D.T. & Archibald, N. (2018). Spatial Working Memory in Progressive Supranuclear Palsy. Cortex

The move from Stockton to our new labs at the Science Laboratories in Durham is complete and the Eyelink II is ready for action. The CRS VET, Eyelink 1000 and BioPac EOG100 will be up and running in the next week or so.