The visual perception of objective motion and subjective movement.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
SEARCH · Search PubMed
Search indexed PubMed citations on genomics, clinical trials, systematic reviews and public health. Explore titles, authors and supplied subject terms, then open the PubMed record.
Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Motion parallax was described as a cue to depth over 300 years ago and as producing apparent motion over 150 years ago. In recent years, experimental interest in motion parallax has increased, following the rediscovery of the idea that stimulus motion can be yoked to head movement. We compare the historical descriptions with some contemporary research, which indicates how depth and motion perception are dependent on the conditions of stimulation.
A patient with unilateral focal cortical dysplasia with a significant impairment of visual motion perception within the contralateral hemifield was examined with fMRI. During hemifield visual motion stimulation primary visual cortex areas were activated contralaterally and deactivated ipsilaterally to the stimulated hemifield. Transcallosal visuo-visual interaction was further evident as bilateral activation in temporo-occipital areas that best correspond to the motion sensitive areas MT/V5. MT/V5 was displaced anteriorly, superiorly, and medially within the dysplastic hemisphere and separated into two distinct activation clusters. During visual motion stimulation the parieto-insular vestibular cortex showed signal decreases that agree with the concept of inhibitory visuo-vestibular interaction. Thus, fMRI is a suitable tool for detecting preserved function and transcallosal connections in patients with focal cortical dysplasia.
The organization of movement in the changing retinal image provides a valuable source of information for analysing the environment in terms of objects, their motion in space, and their three-dimensional structure. A description of this movement is not provided to our visual system directly, however; it must be inferred from the pattern of changing intensity that reaches the eye. This paper examines the problem of motion measurement, which we formulate as the computation of an instantaneous two-dimensional velocity field from the changing image. Initial measurements of motion take place at the location of significant intensity changes. These measurements provide only one component of local velocity, and must be integrated to compute the two-dimensional velocity field. A fundamental problem for this integration stage is that the velocity field is not determined uniquely from information available in the changing image. We formulate an additional constraint of smoothness of the velocity field, based on the physical assumption that surfaces are generally smooth, which allows the computation of a unique velocity field. A theoretical analysis of the conditions under which this computation yields the correct velocity field suggests that the solution is physically plausible. Empirical studies show the predictions of this computation to be consistent with human motion perception.
A striking example of our sensitivity to dynamic information is our ability to infer motion from still images depicted in paintings, photographs or cartoons. What are the neural mechanisms that mediate this implied motion perception? In a recent paper, Krekelberg et al. demonstrate that form cues that imply motion are integrated with real motion information, and influence perception in both humans and monkeys and the neural processing in prototypical motion areas of the monkey brain.
Visual perception, and by implication underlying neural events, can become unstable when optical information specifying objects is ambiguous. Here we report that one striking form of instability-perceived three-dimensional structure-from-motion (SFM)-can be stabilized when an otherwise ambiguous object appears within a context implying frictional interactions with another rotating object; violations of physical conditions specifying friction disrupt stabilization. Evidently, information about frictional interaction is embedded within neural mechanisms specifying SFM.
This study shows the existence in humans of independent neural processing streams in early visual cortex, which had previously been demonstrated in macaque monkeys. This evidence was obtained by controlled fixation testing of a subject who had suffered a small stroke in the right fusiform gyrus. The patient showed a severe disruption of color perception, shape discrimination and contrast sensitivity for stationary gratings in the upper left quadrant of his visual field. However, motion perception and contrast sensitivity for drifting gratings were relatively preserved. These results support the view that there are independent visual processing streams early in human visual cortex, and that these streams may subserve such functions as motion and color/form perception.
Previous studies have suggested that human motion perception involves at least two different detection stages: an orientation selective or component motion stage and a combination stage where selectivity to the coherent motion of a pattern, e.g. a plaid is established. These studies are inconclusive as to the motion detection process per se. Here we provide evidence that the motion detectors involved are of the correlation type. We determined critical values for the temporal and spatial modulation of the stimulus structure where the motion of the stimulus is no longer visible. Our results indicate that the spatial parameters of plaid- and component-motion detectors are identical but that the critical temporal modulation period is shorter for plaid-motion detectors. The results are discussed with respect to recent neurophysiological and psychophysical evidence for the two-stage motion detection model.
Observers adapted to drifting patterns varying either in luminance (first-order pattern), or in contrast (second-order pattern). Sensitivity to increases or decreases in the speed of the first-order pattern increased sharply as adaptation time increased, but sensitivity to speed changes of the second-order pattern remained unchanged throughout the adaptation time. Adaptation of first-order motion mechanisms seems thus to mediate increased sensitivity to variations in speed around the adapting speed. No evidence was found for such effects of adaptation to second-order motion. The observed differences in the effects of adaptation accord well with reports of fundamental differences between after-effects to drifting first- and second-order patterns and are in harmony with models of motion perception emphasizing different mechanisms for the detection of first- and second-order motion.
Glaucoma reportedly affects motion perception. As an initial step in characterizing glaucoma-induced changes in the motion system, we determined the range of temporal frequencies that the motion system could process. A noise-masking paradigm was used to measure contrast energy thresholds of 26 glaucoma patients at various stages of the disease and 16 age-similar subjects with normal vision. Using a sinusoidal stimulus, thresholds were measured for the discrimination of motion direction and for the stimulus embedded within a pattern of dynamic spatial noise. The noise was filtered to contain only low spatial frequencies, and the temporal-frequency spectrum of the noise was manipulated across conditions to derive the temporal filter shape of the most efficient motion sensor. The results show that the range of temporal frequencies processed by the motion system is diminished in the glaucoma group. The filters of the glaucoma subjects have reduced bandwidths compared with the normal-vision group. In addition, the upper cut-off frequency of the filters of the glaucoma subjects is correlated with stage of disease as indexed by the mean deviation of the Humphrey Visual Field Analyzer program 24-2, as well as the cup-to-disk ratio.
Semantic factors are presumed to have little influence on motion perception. Two experiments examined the effects of an object's semantic identity on motion correspondence using the Ternus paradigm. Motion correspondence was not influenced by whether the object depicted is typically moving or stationary, but it was influenced by the way(s) in which an object's components typically move relative to one another: perceived correspondence differed depending on whether the motion tokens constituted the feet of a person walking or the wheels of a car. Apparently, semantic knowledge can influence motion correspondence, although such influence is weak and may be restricted to certain types of semantic information. The adaptive significance of such restricted influences is considered.
The inference of three-dimensional camera motion parameters and the layout of a scene from image flows becomes particularly simple from a computational point of view if the scene contains depth variations. Under this condition, the differential image motion yields a simple estimate of the translation field lines at image locations corresponding to depth discontinuities in the scene. This in turn facilitates closed-form solutions of camera motion parameters and environmental depth. Our results may have relevance to human motion perception, which also seems to rely on depth variation in processing image motion.
We review evidence that visual transient channels responding to temporal change of luminance provide inputs to motion mechanisms, and also play a part in judgments of static brightness. These channels can be adapted to give after effects of apparent dimming or brightening. Nonlinearity in these channels causes a sawtooth grating to look dark (or light) while it is moving to the left (or right). The perceptual outcome in a competitive motion situation is governed by the larger temporal change in luminance: when a white bar and a black bar suddenly change places, on a dark (light) surround it is the white (black) bar that appears to move. The motion system responds to linear, not log luminance. If a black and white picture dissolves (fades) to its own photographic negative which if shifted a few min arc to the right "reversed apparent motion" is seen toward the left. These results constrain possible models of motion perception.
PURPOSE: Motion perception abnormalities and extrastriate abnormalities have been suggested in amblyopia. Functional MRI (fMRI) and motion stimuli were used to study whether interocular differences in activation are detectable in motion-sensitive cortical areas in patients with anisometropic amblyopia. METHODS: We performed fMRI at 1.5 T 4 control subjects (20/20 OU), 1 with monocular suppression (20/25), and 2 with anisometropic amblyopia (20/60, 20/800). Monocular suppression was thought to be form fruste of amblyopia. The experimental stimulus consisted of expanding and contracting concentric rings, whereas the control condition consisted of stationary concentric rings. Activation was determined by contrasting the 2 conditions for each eye. RESULTS: Significant fMRI activation and comparable right and left eye activation was found in V3a and V5 in all control subjects (Average z-values in L vs R contrast 0.42, 0.43) and in the subject with monocular suppression (z = 0.19). The anisometropes exhibited decreased extrastriate activation in their amblyopic eyes compared with the fellow eyes (zs = 2.12, 2.76). CONCLUSIONS: Our data suggest motion-sensitive cortical structures may be less active when anisometropic amblyopic eyes are stimulated with moving rings. These results support the hypothesis that extrastriate cortex is affected in anisometropic amblyopia. Although suggestive of a magnocellular defect, the exact mechanism is unclear.
In addition to a selective response to a narrow range of motion directions, a neural mechanism specialized for motion detection must also be able to discriminate between different speeds of target movement. Many psychophysical and electrophysiological investigations of motion perception have largely been concerned with identifying possible schemes or mechanisms capable of discriminating motion direction, but the ability to discriminate faster or slower movement in the same direction has so far received comparatively little attention. Two schemes capable of motion detection and speed discrimination are reported here, together with experimental data which show that the visual system employs both schemes, one for the slow speed range (i.e. less than 3 degrees/s) and the other for larger speeds of target movement. It is also shown that the use of both schemes ensures that retinal image displacements due to involuntary eye movements (i.e. slow drifts and microsaccades) are not detected as target movement.
The capacity of the isolated chromatic system to perceive global motion was tested in a 40-deg visual field by use of random-dot kinematograms. The method of equivalent cone contrasts was used to directly compare the chromatic and the achromatic systems. The minimum number of dots necessary to correctly identify the motion direction was on the order of 20% for the isochromatic conditions, whereas thresholds were rarely obtained in the chromatic conditions. For both the isochromatic and the chromatic conditions, the central visual field was the most sensitive area, whereas the periphery was slightly less sensitive. This study suggests that the chromatic system does not efficiently integrate local motion cues to generate a global motion percept.
We previously showed that human subjects are better able to discriminate the direction of a motion signal in dynamic noise when the signal is distinguished (segmented) from the noise by color. This finding suggested a hitherto unexplored avenue of interaction between motion and color pathways in the primate visual system. To examine whether chromatic segmentation exerts a similar influence on cortical neurons that contribute to motion direction discrimination, we have now compared the discriminative capacity of single MT neurons and psychophysical observers viewing motion signals with and without chromatic segmentation. All data were obtained from rhesus monkeys trained to discriminate motion direction in dynamic stimuli containing varying proportions of coherently moving (signal) and randomly moving (noise) dots. We obtained psychophysical and neurophysiological data in the same animals, on the same trials, and using the same visual display. Chromatic segmentation of the signal from the noise enhanced both neuronal and psychophysical sensitivity to the motion signal but had a smaller influence on neuronal than on psychophysical sensitivity. Hence the ratio of neuronal to psychophysical thresholds, one measure of the relation between neuronal and psychophysical performance, depended on chromatic segmentation. Increased neuronal sensitivity to chromatically segmented displays stemmed from larger and less noisy responses to motion in the preferred directions of the neurons, suggesting that specialized mechanisms influence responses in the motion pathway when color segments motion signal in visual scenes. These findings lead us to reevaluate potential mechanisms for pooling of MT responses and the role of MT in motion perception.