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Stimulus conditions that enhance anticipatory slow eye movements.

Anticipatory slow eye movements are predictive responses that occur prior to both ramp and step target motions. These low velocity eye movements are enhanced and can be studied in isolation by transient target disappearance before ramp motion onset. Slow eye velocities also decrease prior to the termination of target motion. In experiments using a bistable apparent motion stimulus, it was found that perceived motion is a stimulus for anticipatory slow eye movements. This relationship between motion perception and anticipatory slow eye movements can explain previously noted differences between these predictive movements and the predictive component of smooth pursuit.

Adult↗

Two-dimensional substructure of MT receptive fields.

Neurons at progressively higher levels of the visual system have progressively larger, more complicated receptive fields, presumably constructed from simpler antecedent receptive fields. To study this hierarchical organization, we used sparse white noise to map receptive-field substructure (second order Wiener-like kernels) in an extrastriate motion processing area (MT) of alert monkeys. The maps revealed a clear substructure, on a spatial scale comparable to the receptive fields of the V1 inputs. There were both facilitatory and suppressive interactions that differed in spatial organization and time course. Directional interactions were remarkably precise over a very small spatial range, and reversed when successive stimuli reversed contrast--a neural correlate of "reverse phi" motion perception. The maps of some cells had an unexpected, curved shape, which challenges existing models for direction selectivity.

Animals↗

Visual motion detection in hierarchical spatial frames of reference.

Neurophysiological and neuroimaging work has uncovered modulatory influence of long-range lateral connections from outside of the classical receptive field on neuronal and behavioral responses to localized targets. We report two psychophysical experiments investigating visual detection of real and apparent motion in central vision with and without remote and immediate stationary references. At a particular temporal frequency (0.1-12.8 Hz), participants adjusted the amplitude of either triangle-wave (real) or square-wave (stroboscopic/apparent) oscillatory motion of a vertical bar along a straight, horizontal trajectory for the first impression of the target's stationarity/nonstationarity (the displacement threshold). In the relative motion conditions, a stationary reference bar was positioned 23' apart from the target; in the absolute motion conditions, the bar was absent. The thresholds were measured with a dimly-lit uniform background (13 x 13 degrees ) and either in the darkness (experiment 1) or moving-background conditions (experiment 2). For both real and apparent motion, varying the observation conditions yields three sensitivity levels: irrespective of the background, the lowest thresholds occur in the presence of an immediate reference, followed by the moderately increased thresholds obtained with a dimly-lit background alone. The equally high thresholds occur in the darkness and moving-background conditions without any visible stationary references. The results suggest that the spatial frames of reference for visual motion detection are hierarchically nested, yet independent. The findings provide support for the view that absolute motion perception should be considered relative, extending neurophysiological evidence for the existence of long-range lateral connections across the visual field.

Adult↗

Impairment in motion discrimination tasks is unrelated to amount of damage to superior temporal sulcus motion areas.

The behavioral role of the middle temporal (MT/V5) area and its satellites in motion processing is still unclear, particularly the degree to which MT/V5 proper is critical for different types of motion processing. Therefore, effects of small and large lesions in the caudal part of the superior temporal sulcus of macaque monkeys were compared for two tasks requiring different types of motion processing: a direction and a kinetic orientation discrimination. The small lesion was restricted to the peripheral representation of MT/V5 but included V4t, whereas the large lesion included all of MT/V5 and the medial superior temporal (MST) area as well as substantial parts of the floor of the superior temporal (FST) area. Both lesions resulted in significant and long-lasting impairment of direction discrimination but had a lesser effect on kinetic orientation discrimination. Thus the effects of small STS lesions on motion perception are much stronger than expected.

Animals↗

Deficits in speed discrimination following lesions of the lateral suprasylvian cortex in the cat.

We examined the role of the lateral suprasylvian (LS) cortex in motion perception by testing the ability of three cats to detect moving targets and to discriminate differences in stimulus direction and speed before and after making bilateral ibotenic acid lesions in LS. The lesions had little or no effect on contrast sensitivity for detecting moving sinusoidal gratings. Moreover, we found no deficits in discriminating opposite directions of motion: the cats discriminated grating directions at threshold contrasts. All three cats, however, showed permanent deficits in discriminating differences in speed and in flicker rate. The deficits were most pronounced at higher temporal and spatial frequencies and at lower contrasts. This result suggests that LS plays an important role in the analysis of stimulus speed. It appears that information needed for discriminating opposite directions of motion may be signalled by visual areas outside LS.

Animals↗

Explaining the footsteps, belly dancer, Wenceslas, and kickback illusions.

The footsteps illusion (FI) demonstrates that an object's background can have a profound effect on the object's perceived speed. This illusion consists of a yellow bar and a blue bar that move over a black-and-white, striped background. Although the bars move at a constant rate, they appear to repeatedly accelerate and decelerate in antiphase with each other. Previously, this illusion has been explained in terms of the variations in contrast at the leading and trailing edges of the bars that occur as the bars traverse the striped background. Here, we show that this explanation is inadequate and instead propose that for each bar, the bar's leading edge, trailing edge, lateral edges, and the surrounding background edges all contribute to the bar's perceived speed and that the degree to which each edge contributes to the motion percept is determined by that edge's contrast. We show that this theory can explain all the data on the FI as well as the belly dancer and Wenceslas illusions. We conclude by presenting a new illusion, the kickback illusion, which, although geometrically similar to the FI, is mediated by a different mechanism, namely, reverse phi motion.

Acceleration↗

Hemispheric asymmetries in categorical judgments of direction versus coordinate judgments of velocity of motion.

Three experiments on visual field differences in motion perception are reported. Experiment 1 employed circular stimuli that grew or shrank either quickly or slowly. Experiments 2 and 3 employed circles that moved upward or downward either quickly or slowly. Judgments based on categorical equivalence classes (i.e., grow/shrink, upward/downward) generally yielded small and nonsignificant right visual field advantages. Judgments based on the precise coordinates of motion (i.e., quickly/slowly) yielded significant left visual field advantages across all three experiments. Results are interpreted in light of Kosslyn's (1987) model of hemispheric differences in the processing of categorical versus coordinate spatial relations.

Attention↗

First-order and second-order motion: neurological evidence for neuroanatomically distinct systems.

An unresolved issue in visual motion perception is how distinct are the processes underlying 'first-order' and 'second-order' motion. The former is defined by spatio-temporal variations of luminance and the latter by spatio-temporal variations in other image attributes such as contrast or depth, for example. Using neuroimaging and psychophysics we present data from four neurological patients with unilateral and mostly cortical infarcts, which strongly suggest that first- and second-order motion have a different neural substrate. We found that from the early stages of processing, these two types of motions are mediated by two distinct pathways: first-order motion is carried out by mechanisms along the dorsal pathway in the occipital lobe, while the second-order motion by mechanisms mostly along the ventral pathway. The data reported here also suggest that different cortical regions may be in charge of processing direction-discrimination in second-order motion defined by different second-order attributes.

Adult↗

A selective history of the study of visual motion aftereffects.

The visual motion aftereffect (MAE) was initially described after observation of movements in the natural environment, like those seen in rivers and waterfalls: stationary objects appeared to move briefly in the opposite direction. In the second half of the nineteenth century the MAE was displaced into the laboratory for experimental enquiry with the aid of Plateau's spiral. Such was the interest in the phenomenon that a major review of empirical and theoretical research was written in 1911. In the latter half of the present century novel stimuli (like drifting gratings, isoluminance patterns, spatial and luminance ramps, random-dot kinematograms, and first-order and second-order motions), introduced to study space and motion perception generally, have been applied to examine MAEs. Developing theories of cortical visual processing have drawn upon MAEs to provide a link between psychophysics and physiology; this has been most pronounced in the context of monocular and binocular channels in the visual system, the combination of colour and contour information, and in the cortical sites most associated with motion processing. The relatively unchanging characteristic of the study of MAEs has been the mode of measurement: duration continues to be used as an index of its strength, although measures of threshold elevation and nulling with computer-generated motions are becoming more prevalent. The MAE is a part of the armoury of motion phenomena employed to uncover the mysteries of vision. Over the last 150 years it has proved itself immensely adaptable to the shifts of fashion in visual science, and it is likely to continue in this vein.

Afterimage↗

Motion-detection thresholds for first- and second-order gratings and plaids.

The two-stage decomposition-recombination model of 2D motion perception has been criticised on the basis that the direction of plaid stimuli can be accurately discriminated at speeds so low that the direction of their Fourier components is not discriminable. The nature of this gap in performance between gratings and plaids was investigated across a range of spatial frequencies and durations for first- and second-order stimuli. Motion-detection thresholds were obtained using a 2AFC, constant stimuli procedure and it was found that although thresholds for detection of plaid motion were often lower than those for gratings, the gap in performance between first-order plaids and gratings was unreliable, varying in magnitude and occasionally direction with the spatial frequency of the stimulus, presentation duration and observer. Curiously, an analogous gap found between purely second-order gratings and second-order plaids was more reliable and stable. It has been suggested that the gap is the result of 'local motion detectors' or broadly tuned V1 cells. The data presented here suggest that second-order mechanisms are responsible for the gap and that first-order information may even disrupt it.

Humans↗

First-order motion from contrast modulated noise?

The class of microbalanced motion stimuli is thought to contain no systematic directional biases in motion energy. The fact that we can see motion in such stimuli implies that models of human motion perception based on Fourier decomposition need to be revised. The validity of one widely studied class of microbalanced stimuli, contrast modulated noise, has recently been questioned. It has been proposed that stochastic local biases in the noise carrier give rise to luminance artifacts detectable by a Fourier energy mechanism. However, in this study we show that the response of a motion energy system to contrast modulated noise shows no directional bias over a number of carrier configurations. We conclude that this class of stimuli remains an important tool for researchers wishing to study non-Fourier motion.

Fourier Analysis↗

Psychophysical evidence for a functional hierarchy of motion processing mechanisms.

Current models of motion perception typically describe mechanisms that operate locally to extract direction and speed information. To deal with the movement of self or objects with respect to the environment, higher-level receptive fields are presumably assembled from the outputs of such local analyzers. We find that the apparent speed of gratings viewed through four spatial apertures depends on the interaction of motion directions among the apertures, even when the motion within each aperture is identical except for direction. Specifically, local motion consistent with a global pattern of radial motion appears 32% faster than that consistent with translational or rotational motion. The enhancement of speed is not reflected in detection thresholds and persists in spite of instructions to fixate a single local aperture and ignore the global configuration. We also find that a two-dimensional pattern of motion is necessary to elicit the effect and that motion contrast alone does not produce the enhancement. These results implicate at least two serial stages of motion-information processing: a mechanism to code the local direction and speed of motion, followed by a global mechanism that integrates such signals to represent meaningful patterns of movement, depending on the configuration of the local motions.

Contrast Sensitivity↗

The how and why of what went where in apparent motion: modeling solutions to the motion correspondence problem.

A model that is capable of maintaining the identities of individuated elements as they move is described. It solves a particular problem of underdetermination, the motion correspondence problem, by simultaneously applying 3 constraints: the nearest neighbor principle, the relative velocity principle, and the element integrity principle. The model generates the same correspondence solutions as does the human visual system for a variety of displays, and many of its properties are consistent with what is known about the physiological mechanisms underlying human motion perception. The model can also be viewed as a proposal of how the identities of attentional tags are maintained by visual cognition, and thus it can be differentiated from a system that serves merely to detect movement.

Attention↗

Perception of biological motion in parietal patients.

Three unilateral parietal patients were tested on their perception of biological motion, a special case of form-from-motion. Two patients had the lesion in the right, and one in the left parietal area. All patients could easily perform a classical form-from-motion task [Neuron 32 (2001) 985], but they were severely impaired in a visual search task using biological motion sequences. In particular, the left parietal patient showed a more severe loss. He was unable to identify even a single item. Overall our patients seemed to perform differently from the classical motion-blind patients described in the literature [Visual Cognition 3 (1996) 363; Eur. J. Neurol. 9 (2002) 463; Visual Neurosci. 5 (1990) 353] whose lesions included the visual cortical area V5. Since our patients' low-level motion mechanisms are preserved, we suggest that the perception of biological motion relies on a high-level description of dynamic patterns [Cognition 80 (2001) 47], a mechanism that is impaired in parietal lobe patients. We discuss our results at the light of the recent theories suggesting that biological motion is performed by visual associative areas outside the classical motion pathways and that it is an active process dependent on attentional resources [Cognition 80 (2001) 47].

Aged↗

Motion detection deficits in infantile esotropia without nystagmus.

PURPOSE: To investigate whether adults with infantile strabismus but without latent nystagmus have abnormalities of horizontal motion detection. METHODS: Eleven adult subjects with infantile esotropia but without latent nystagmus and 15 control subjects were required to detect the onset of motion and drift direction of a sinusoidal, spatial frequency grating that moved with linearly increasing velocity. The grating was presented monocularly in paracentral vision at an eccentricity of 16.5 degrees with a field size of 18 degrees. The contrast of the grating was just above contrast threshold for visibility. RESULTS: The mean velocity threshold for detection of motion was raised significantly in the patient group compared with the control group. Nine of the 11 subjects with infantile esotropia demonstrated directional asymmetry for the detection of motion. Thresholds were elevated more often when the grating was moving nasally in the squinting eye and temporally in the nonsquinting eye, and raised thresholds were more prevalent in the squinting eye. CONCLUSIONS: The findings indicate that in infantile esotropia, the presence of motion perception deficits are not always associated with the development of latent nystagmus. The predominance of nasally directed motion deficits in the squinting eye and temporally directed motion deficits in the nonsquinting eye was unexpected and may have been caused by abnormal development of cortical motion processing.

Adult↗

Separate detection of moving luminance and contrast modulations: fact or artifact?

We have investigated first-order artifacts in second-order motion perception. Subjects were required to identify the orientation and direction of a drifting sinusoidal contrast modulation. When the carrier consisted of static two-dimensional noise, performance often reflected the use of first-order artifacts that arise from stochastic local biases in the noise, rather than the detection of the contrast modulation per se. This stimulus, which has been used widely for studying second-order motion, therefore appears to be inappropriate for that purpose. In contrast, global distortion products arising from luminance non-linearities do not appear to provide usable artifacts. Two manipulations were employed to eliminate local first-order artifacts: the use of dynamic noise and the use of high-pass filtered static noise. These two manipulations gave similar results, which were quite different from those obtained with broadband static noise. We argue that performance with both of these image types reflects the activity of a true second-order motion mechanism. A characteristic property of this mechanism is that it cannot specify direction at the threshold for detecting orientation. Direction thresholds are around 50% higher than orientation thresholds when first-order artifacts are eliminated.

Contrast Sensitivity↗

The perceived direction of textured gratings and their motion aftereffects.

The stimuli in these experiments are square-wave luminance gratings with an array of small random dots covering the high-luminance regions. Owing to the texture, the direction of these gratings, when seen through a circular aperture, is disambiguated because the visual system is provided with an unambiguous motion energy. Thus, the direction of textured gratings can be varied independently of grating orientation. When subjects are required to judge the direction of textured gratings moving obliquely relative to their orientation, they can do so accurately (experiment 1). This is of interest because most studies of one-dimensional motion perception have involved (textureless) luminance-defined since-wave or square-wave gratings, and the perceived direction of these gratings is constrained by the aperture problem to be orthogonal to their orientation. Thus, direction and orientation have often been confounded. Interestingly, when subjects are required to judge the direction of an obliquely moving textured grating during a period of adaptation and then the direction of the motion aftereffect (MAE) immediately following adaptation (experiments 2 and 3), these directions are not directly opposite each other. MAE directions were always more orthogonal to the orientation of the adapting grating than the corresponding direction judgments during adaptation (by as much as 25 degrees). These results are not readily explained by conventional MAE models and possible accounts are considered.

Adaptation, Ocular↗

The eye movement capacity to pursue optokinetic stimuli of increasing frequency and velocity.

Changes in the mean frequency, amplitude and angular velocity of the slow phases of optokinetic nystagmus (OKN) were examined in 72 subjects when the frequency and velocity of optokinetic stimuli were step-wise increased from 1 Hz (17 degrees s-1) up to 12 Hz (204 degrees s-1). The gradual failure of the oculomotor component of visual motion perception was characterized by progressive lagging of the OKN parameters behind the increasing frequency and velocity of moving stimuli and by episodic cessation and reappearance of the OKN pattern at higher frequencies and velocities of stimuli. The frequency and velocity of stimuli at which OKN completely ceased was related to the degree of lagging of the OKN pursuit phases behind the stimuli already at low velocities of their motion.

Adolescent↗