Speed of visual processing increases with eccentricity

[jinglescode]

Paper

Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/nn1079
Year: 2003

Summary

• the fovea has the resolution required to process fine spatial information, but the periphery is more sensitive to temporal properties
• speed of information processing varies with eccentricity: processing was faster when same-size stimuli appeared at 9° than 4° eccentricity
• at the same eccentricity, larger stimuli are processed more slowly

Results

• More area and neurons are devoted to the central visual field than to peripheral regions, from retinal ganglion cells to visual cortex. One explanation of the speed advantage for the periphery could be that integration and processing time increase with the size of the cortical area involved, which is larger at parafoveal than peripheral regions.
• At the same eccentricity, discriminability was substantially better for the larger targets stimulating a larger cortical area
• processing speed for 9° magnified stimuli was intermediate: faster than size-matched stimuli at 4° but slower than unmagnified stimuli at 9°