The Hierarchy Of Directional Interactions In Visual Motion Processing

Main Category: Eye Health / Blindness
Also Included In: Neurology / Neuroscience;  Psychology / Psychiatry
Article Date: 02 Oct 2008 - 5:00 PDT

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Humans can accurately perceive a moving object's direction. We can also, however, be fooled into miss-perceiving this direction.

If one views upward motion for some 30 seconds and then subsequently looks at motion in a different direction, the latter may be grossly miss-calculated. This illusion is known as the direction after-effect.

We can also be fooled into miss-calculating the directions of two superimposed motions - direction repulsion. These two illusions react similarly to various experimental manipulations, consistent with the same neural structures driving both illusions. We devised a series of experiments demonstrating that the two illusions are driven by different neural structures.

This finding furthers our understanding of the cascade of processes underlying vision.

Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Proceedings B is the Royal Society's flagship biological research journal, dedicated to the rapid publication and broad dissemination of high-quality research papers, reviews and comment and reply papers. The scope of journal is diverse and is especially strong in organismal biology.

Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences