Ocular following response to sampled motion

Boström Kim Joris, Warzecha Anne-Kathrin

Abstract

We investigate the impact of monitor frame rate on the human ocular following response (OFR) and find that the response latency considerably depends on the frame rate in the range of 80–160 Hz, which is far above the flicker fusion limit. From the lowest to the highest frame rate the latency declines by roughly 10 ms. Moreover, the relationship between response latency and stimulus speed is affected by the frame rate, compensating and even inverting the effect at lower frame rates. In contrast to that, the initial response acceleration is not affected by the frame rate and its expected dependence on stimulus speed remains stable. The nature of these phenomena reveals insights into the neural mechanism of low-level motion detection underlying the ocular following response.