RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Microsaccadic information sampling provides Drosophila hyperacute vision JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 083691 DO 10.1101/083691 A1 Mikko Juusola A1 An Dau A1 Zhuoyi Song A1 Narendra Solanki A1 Diana Rien A1 David Jaciuch A1 Sidhartha Dongre A1 Florence Blanchard A1 Gonzalo G. de Polavieja A1 Roger C. Hardie A1 Jouni Takalo YR 2017 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/01/31/083691.abstract 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.