Feedback of peripheral saccade targets to early foveal cortex

Human vision is characterized by frequent eye movements and constant shifts in visual input, yet our perception of the world remains remarkably stable. Here we directly demonstrate the existence of an image-specific foveal prediction signal that reaches all the way back to primary visual cortex. To this end, we used a gaze-contingent fMRI paradigm, in which peripheral saccade targets disappeared before they could be fixated. Despite no direct foveal stimulation, we were able to decode peripheral saccade targets from foveal retinotopic areas, demonstrating that image-specific feedback during saccade preparation must underlie this effect. Decoding was sensitive to shape but not semantic category of natural images, indicating feedback of only low-to-mid-level information. Cross-decoding to a control condition with foveal stimulus presentation indicated a shared representational format between foveal feedback and direct stimulation. Moreover, eccentricity-dependent analyses showed a u-shaped decoding curve, confirming that these results are not explained by spillover of peripheral activity or large receptive fields. Finally, fluctuations in foveal decodability covaried with activity in the intraparietal sulcus, thus providing a candidate region for driving foveal feedback. These findings reveal that foveal cortex predicts the features of incoming stimuli through feedback from higher cortical areas, which offers a candidate mechanism underlying stable perception and may facilitate object recognition across saccades.