Predictive remapping gives rise to environmental inhibition of return

Abstract

Neurons in various brain regions predictively respond to stimuli that will be brought to their receptive fields by an impending eye movement. This neural mechanism, known as predictive remapping, has been suggested to underlie spatial constancy. Inhibition of return (IOR) is a bias against recently attended locations. The present study examined whether predictive remapping is a mechanism underlying IOR effects observed in environmental coordinates. The participant made saccades to a peripheral location after an IOR effect had been elicited by an onset cue and discriminated a target presented around the time of saccade onset. Immediately before the required saccade, IOR emerged at the retinal locus that would be brought to the cued location. A second task in which the participant maintained fixation during the entire trial ruled out the possibility that this IOR effect was simply the spillover of IOR from the cued location. These findings, for the first time, provide direct behavioral evidence that predictive remapping is a mechanism underlying environmental IOR.