PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
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
TI  - Microsaccadic information sampling provides <em>Drosophila</em> hyperacute vision
AID  - 10.1101/083691
DP  - 2017 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 083691
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/01/31/083691.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/01/31/083691.full
AB  - 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.