Examples of remapping and shifting attention across saccades.

<p>(A) Responsiveness of single cells prior to a saccade (e.g. <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0045670#pone.0045670-Duhamel1" target="_blank">[<i>4</i>]</a>). During initial fixation (the cross), the retinotopic location of the receptive field of a population of cells is shown in red; these cells would initially respond to the onset of the square. When there is an impending saccade, however, these cells should begin to respond to a stimulus presented within their future-field (dotted orange circle). (B) Mathôt and Theeuwes <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0045670#pone.0045670-Matht1" target="_blank">[<i>1</i>]</a> suggested attention is predictively remapped in the direction of the saccade. According to their account, if attention at the dotted circle is subserved by the same cells as in (A), attending to a cue (the square) should increase the firing rate of these cells during fixation. Because of predictive remapping, these cells should begin to respond to stimuli at the cells' future-field just prior to the saccade. As suggested by Mathôt and Theeuwes <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0045670#pone.0045670-Matht1" target="_blank">[<i>1</i>]</a>, <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0045670#pone.0045670-Matht2" target="_blank">[<i>8</i>]</a>, the cued cells' increased firing rate might enhance processing of targets within the future-field. Such a change in attention, however, could also result in attention being allocated to a non-cued location following the saccade, which would be functionally irrelevant. (C) “Functional remapping”, as demonstrated by Rolfs et al <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0045670#pone.0045670-Rolfs1" target="_blank">[<i>2</i>]</a>. Remapping attention in this case is subserved by a population of neurons similar to those shown in (A), but whose classic receptive field is to the left of fixation. Because the position of the cue will shift from the right visual field during fixation to the left visual field following a rightward saccade, functional remapping of attention would require a shift of attention in the opposite direction to the saccade. This attention shift compensates for the retinal shift of visual objects following the saccade.