Shimojo Implicit Brain Function Project, Japan Science and Technology Agency, Atsugi, Kanagawa 243-0198, Japan.
J Neurosci. 2010 Jan 6;30(1):205-9. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2599-09.2010.
It is well established that humans can react more quickly to a visual stimulus in the visual field center than to one in the visual periphery and that the reaction to a stimulus in the visual periphery markedly deteriorates with aging. These tendencies are true in conventional discrimination-reaction tasks. Surprisingly, however, we found that they are entirely different when reactions are induced by the same visual stimuli during reaching movements. The reaction time for a stimulus in the visual periphery was significantly faster than in the central vision, and age-related slowing of reactions to the stimulus in the visual periphery were quite small, compared to that observed in the conventional reaction tasks. This inconsistent slowing of reactions in different motor conditions underscores a distinctive visuomotor pathway for online control, which is more robust against age-related deterioration.
众所周知，人类对于视野中心的视觉刺激的反应速度要快于视野周边的刺激，而且随着年龄的增长，对于视野周边刺激的反应明显恶化。这些趋势在传统的辨别-反应任务中是正确的。然而，令人惊讶的是，当在进行伸手动作时，同样的视觉刺激引起反应时，这些趋势却完全不同。视野周边的刺激的反应时间明显快于中央视觉，而且与传统的反应任务相比，年龄相关的对视野周边刺激的反应速度减缓要小得多。这种在不同运动条件下反应速度不一致的情况突显了一种独特的在线控制视动通路，它对年龄相关的退化具有更强的鲁棒性。
