Abstract
There is now considerable evidence that space is compressed when stimuli are flashed shortly before or after the onset of a saccadic eye movement. Here we report that short intervals of time between two successive perisaccadic visual (but not auditory) stimuli are also underestimated, indicating a compression of perceived time. We were even more surprised that in a critical interval before saccades, perceived temporal order is consistently reversed. The very similar time courses of spatial and temporal compression suggest that both are mediated by a common neural mechanism, probably related to the predictive shifts that occur in receptive fields of many visual areas at the time of saccades.
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Acknowledgements
We acknowledge relevant previous work in our laboratory by M.R. Diamond. This research was funded by grants from the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council and the Australian Research Committee and by the Italian Ministry of Education, Universities and Research (Progetti di Ricerca di Interesse Nazionale).
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Morrone, M., Ross, J. & Burr, D. Saccadic eye movements cause compression of time as well as space. Nat Neurosci 8, 950–954 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1488
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1488
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