TY - JOUR T1 - Microsaccadic information sampling provides <em>Drosophila</em> hyperacute vision JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/083691 SP - 083691 AU - Mikko Juusola AU - An Dau AU - Zhuoyi Song AU - Narendra Solanki AU - Diana Rien AU - David Jaciuch AU - Sidhartha Dongre AU - Florence Blanchard AU - Gonzalo G. de Polavieja AU - Roger C. Hardie AU - Jouni Takalo Y1 - 2017/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/01/31/083691.abstract N2 - Small fly eyes should not see fine image details. Because flies exhibit saccadic visual behaviors and their compound eyes have relatively few ommatidia (sampling points), their photoreceptors would be expected to generate blurry and coarse retinal images of the world. Here we demonstrate that Drosophila see the world far better than predicted from the classic theories. By using electrophysiological, optical and behavioral assays, we found that R1-R6 photoreceptors’ encoding capacity in time is maximized to fast high-contrast bursts, which resemble their light input during saccadic behaviors. Whilst over space, R1-R6s resolve moving objects at saccadic speeds beyond the predicted motion-blur-limit. Our results show how refractory phototransduction and rapid photomechanical photoreceptor contractions jointly sharpen retinal images in space-time, enabling hyperacute vision, and explain how such microsaccadic information sampling exceeds the compound eyes’ optical limits. ER -