Author(s)

Yul-Wan Sung, Hiroshi Tsubokawa, Young-Bo Kim, Seiji Ogawa

Graduate School of Human Relations, Keio University, Incheon, Korea.
Kansei Fukushi Research Institute, Tohoku Fukushi University, Sendai, Japan.

Eye movements play an important role in attention and visual processing. However, the manner in which eye move-ments are involved in object processing is not clear. The aim of this study is to examine the effects of eye movements on object-processing areas in the occipito-temporal region. Eye movements are always accompanied by visual perception; therefore, the effects of eye movements on object-processing areas in which visual object information is sent via eye movements instead of via retinal inputs of visual images must be measured. For this purpose, response to an eye- drawing stimulation in subjects who drew pictures of faces or buildings by their moving eyes under closed-eye condi-tions was measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging. Functional areas in the occipito-temporal region showed negative responses to the eye-drawing stimulation, and the pattern of negative activation maps in the region was almost the same as that of positive activation maps observed after visual image stimulation. Responses in cate-gory-selective area showed category dependency to the eye-drawing stimulation. This suggests that eye movements provide inhibitory inputs to the object-processing areas in the occipito-temporal region, and these inputs may modulate visual inputs to these areas coming through the retina in the visual perception process.

Eye Movements; Visual Object Processing; Occipito-Temporal Region; Inhibitory; Functional MRI (fMRI)

Y. Sung, H. Tsubokawa, Y. Kim and S. Ogawa, "Eye Movements Provide Inhibitory Inputs to the Occipito-Temporal Region," Open Journal of Medical Imaging, Vol. 2 No. 3, 2012, pp. 85-89. doi: 10.4236/ojmi.2012.23015.