Paper accepted in Communications Biology

Wynn, S.C., Bezsudnova, Y. And Jensen, O. (in press) Neural Sharpening of Object Categories Through Parafoveal Priming. Commun Biol 

Every few moments, our eyes jump to new parts of a scene. This study asked whether objects seen just outside the centre of gaze give the brain a useful head start. Participants viewed natural object pictures while brain activity was recorded with MEG. When an object appeared first in the parafovea and then shortly afterwards in the centre of gaze, people later remembered it better. The brain also responded less strongly, but the distributed neuronal patterns identified the object category more clearly. These results suggest that brief previews sharpen visual representations, helping the brain process objects efficiently during everyday visual exploration.