Spatial localization precedes temporal determination in visual perception.

The temporal order of two spots of light successively appearing in the dark, just before a saccade, influences their perceived spatial relation. Both spots are mislocalized in the saccade direction--the second more so than the first--because mislocalization grows as time elapses from stimulus to saccade onset. On the other hand, the perceived order of the two spots may be altered if the second spot is at the focus of spatial attention.

Testing quasi-visual neurons in the monkey's frontal eye field with the triple-step paradigm.

To look successively at sites where several spots of light have appeared in the dark, we cannot simply rely on the image left by these targets on our retina. Our brain has to update target coordinates by taking into account each gaze movement that has taken place. A particular type of brain cell--the quasi-visual (QV) neuron--is assumed to play an important role in this updating by combining target coordinates and eye displacement signals.