Nonretinocentric localization of successively presented flashes during smooth pursuit eye movements

Keeping track of objects in our environment across body and eye movements is essential for perceptual stability and localization of external objects. As of yet, it is largely unknown how this perceptual stability is achieved. A common behavioral approach to investigate potential neuronal mechanisms underlying spatial vision has been the presentation of one brief visual stimulus across eye movements. Here, we adopted this approach and aimed to determine the reference frame of the perceptual localization of two successively presented flashes during fixation and smooth pursuit eye movements (SPEMs). To this end, eccentric flashes with a stimulus onset asynchrony of zero or ± 200 ms had to be localized with respect to each other during fixation and SPEMs. The results were used to evaluate different models predicting the reference frame in which the spatial information is represented. First, we were able to reproduce the well-known effect of relative mislocalization during fixation. Second, smooth pursuit led to a characteristic relative mislocalization, different from that during fixation. A model assuming that relative localization takes place in a nonretinocentric reference frame described our data best. This suggests that the relative localization judgment is performed at a stage of visual processing in which retinal and nonretinal information is available.