Cortical Origins of the Flash-Lag Effect distortions: The Influence of Retinotopic Map Architecture

The flash-lag effect (FLE) is an illusion whereby the position of a moving object is perceived as being offset in the direction of movement when compared to a flashed static stimulus. This perceptual misalignment has been posited as a key phenomenon in explaining our ability to accurately predict the future position of moving objects, despite the delays in neuronal processing. Our working hypothesis is that the FLE is resulting from the anticipation generated by propagation of neural activity within visual cortical retinotopical maps. According to this hypothesis, the FLE should be affected by discontinuities and anisotropies of the retinotopic map architecture. Using psychophysics we show that the FLE is strongly affected by crossing and the direction of motion in respect to retinotopic features, such as vertical and horizontal meridians and the fovea. The specificity of how early visual cortical retinotopic maps are splitted and magnified around these features led us to suggest that the FLE distortions emerge from propagation in retinotopically organized networks, particularly V1. This work bridges the gap between human psychophysics and the known constraints of retinotopic maps layout, offering a testable framework for future studies of motion position encoding in the visual hierarchy.