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Speed of visual processing increases with eccentricity

Nature Neuroscience volume 6, pages 699–700 (2003)Cite this article

A Corrigendum to this article was published on 01 August 2003

Abstract

The visual system has a duplex design to meet conflicting environmental demands: the fovea has the resolution required to process fine spatial information, but the periphery is more sensitive to temporal properties1,2,3. To investigate whether the periphery's sensitivity is partly due to the speed with which information is processed, we measured the full timecourse of visual information processing by deriving joint measures of discriminability and speed, and found that speed of information processing varies with eccentricity: processing was faster when same-size stimuli appeared at 9° than 4° eccentricity, and this difference was attenuated when the 9° stimuli were magnified to equate cortical representation size. At the same eccentricity, larger stimuli are processed more slowly. These temporal differences are greater than expected from neurophysiological constraints4,5,6.

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Figure 1: SAT methodology and hypothetical functions.
Figure 2: SAT results and speed of visual processing.

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Acknowledgements

We thank J.M. Hupé, M. Landy, P. Lennie, L. Maloney, D. Pelli and R. Shapley for discussions. A National Science Foundation (BCS–9910734/HCP] grant to M.C. and a National Institute of Mental Health (MH57458) grant to B.M. supported this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology New York University, 4 Washington Place, New York, 10003, New York, USA

    Marisa Carrasco, Brian McElree, Kristina Denisova & Anna Marie Giordano

  2. Department of Neural Science, New York University, 4 Washington Place, New York, 10003, New York, USA

    Marisa Carrasco

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  1. Marisa Carrasco
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  2. Brian McElree
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  3. Kristina Denisova
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  4. Anna Marie Giordano
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Correspondence to Marisa Carrasco.

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Carrasco, M., McElree, B., Denisova, K. et al. Speed of visual processing increases with eccentricity. Nat Neurosci 6, 699–700 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1079

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