Two motion systems with common and separate pathways for color and luminance

The effect of target speed on perception of visual motion direction in a patient with akinetopsia

Although much research has been devoted to the neural correlates of motion perception, the processing of speed of motion is still a topic of discussion. Apart from patient LM, no in-depth clinical research has been done in the past 20 years on this topic. In the present study, we investigated patient TD, who suffered from the rare disorder akinetopsia due to bilateral lesions of V5 after stroke. By means of a Random-Dot-Kinematogram (RDK) in which speed was varied systematically, it was found that TD was impaired in perceiving the direction of movement at speeds exceeding 9 deg/s. Our study suggests that V5 plays an important role in processing high-speed visual motion and further implies that V5 does not play a crucial role in processing low-speed visual motion. A remarkable finding, which has not been shown before, was that TD always reported the opposite direction of the actual movement at a speed of 24 deg/s. This suggests a form of the continuous wagon wheel illusion, which might have been caused by intact brain areas operating at different sampling rates than area V5.

Neural Correlates of Speed-Tuned Motion Perception in Healthy Adults

It has been suggested that slow and medium-to-fast speeds of motion may be processed by at least partially separate mechanisms. The purpose of this study was to establish the cortical areas activated during motion-defined form and global motion tasks as a function of speed, using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Participants performed discrimination tasks with random dot stimuli at high coherence, at coherence near their own thresholds, and for random motion. Stimuli were moving at 0.1 or 5 deg/s. In the motion-defined form task, lateral occipital complex, V5/MT+ and intraparietal sulcus showed greater activation by high or near-threshold coherence than by random motion stimuli; V5/MT+ and intraparietal sulcus demonstrated greater activation for 5 than 0.1 deg/s dot motion. In the global motion task, only high coherence stimuli elicited significant activation over random motion; this activation was primarily in nonclassical motion areas. V5/MT+ was active for all motion conditions and showed similar activation for coherent and random motion. No regions demonstrated speed-tuning effects for global motion. These results suggest that similar cortical systems are activated by slow- and medium-speed stimuli during these tasks in healthy adults.

The maturation of global motion perception depends on the spatial and temporal offsets of the stimulus

The typical development of motion perception is commonly assessed with tests of global motion integration using random dot kinematograms. There are discrepancies, however, with respect to when typically-developing children reach adult-like performance on this task, ranging from as early as 3 years to as late as 12 years. To address these discrepancies, the current study measured the effect of frame duration (Δt) and signal dot spatial offset (Δx) on motion coherence thresholds in adults and children. Two Δt values were used in combination with seven Δx values, for a range of speeds (0.3-38 deg/s). Developmental comparisons showed that for the longer Δt, children performed as well as adults for larger Δx, and were immature for smaller Δx. When parameters were expressed as speed, there was a range of intermediate speeds (4-12 deg/s) for which maturity was dependent on the values of Δx and Δt tested. These results resolve previous discrepancies by showing that motion sensitivity to a given speed may be mature, or not, depending on the underlying spatial and temporal properties of the motion stimulus.

The effect of dot speed and density on the development of global motion perception

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of dot speed and dot density on the development of global motion perception by comparing the performance of adults and children (5-6years old) on a direction-discrimination task. Motion coherence thresholds were measured at two dot speeds (1 and 4deg/s) and three dot densities (1, 15, 30dots/deg(2)). Adult coherence thresholds were constant at approximately 9%, regardless of speed or density. Child coherence thresholds were significantly higher across conditions, and were most immature at the slow speed and at the sparse density. Thus, the development of global motion perception depends heavily on stimulus parameters. This finding can account for some of the discrepancy in the current developmental literature. Our results, however, caution against making general claims about motion deficits in clinical populations based on only a single measurement at a specific combination of speed and density.

Effects of speed, age, and amblyopia on the perception of motion-defined form

We determined the effect of dot speed on the typical and atypical development of motion-defined form perception. Monocular motion coherence thresholds for orientation discrimination of motion-defined rectangles were determined at slow (0.1 deg/s), medium (0.9 deg/s) and fast (5.0 deg/s) dot speeds. First we examined typical development from age 4 to 31 years. We found that performance was most immature at the slow speed and in the youngest group of children (4-6 years). Next we measured motion-defined form perception in the amblyopic and fellow eyes of patients with amblyopia. Deficits were found in both eyes and were most pronounced at the slow speed. These results demonstrate the importance of dot speed to the development of motion-defined form perception. Implications regarding sensitive periods and the neural correlates of motion-defined form perception are discussed.

Transitions between central and peripheral vision create spatial/temporal distortions: a hypothesis concerning the perceived break of the curveball

Background

The human visual system does not treat all parts of an image equally: the central segments of an image, which fall on the fovea, are processed with a higher resolution than the segments that fall in the visual periphery. Even though the differences between foveal and peripheral resolution are large, these differences do not usually disrupt our perception of seamless visual space. Here we examine a motion stimulus in which the shift from foveal to peripheral viewing creates a dramatic spatial/temporal discontinuity.

Methodology/Principal Findings

The stimulus consists of a descending disk (global motion) with an internal moving grating (local motion). When observers view the disk centrally, they perceive both global and local motion (i.e., observers see the disk's vertical descent and the internal spinning). When observers view the disk peripherally, the internal portion appears stationary, and the disk appears to descend at an angle. The angle of perceived descent increases as the observer views the stimulus from further in the periphery. We examine the first- and second-order information content in the display with the use of a three-dimensional Fourier analysis and show how our results can be used to describe perceived spatial/temporal discontinuities in real-world situations.

Conclusions/Significance

The perceived shift of the disk's direction in the periphery is consistent with a model in which foveal processing separates first- and second-order motion information while peripheral processing integrates first- and second-order motion information. We argue that the perceived distortion may influence real-world visual observations. To this end, we present a hypothesis and analysis of the perception of the curveball and rising fastball in the sport of baseball. The curveball is a physically measurable phenomenon: the imbalance of forces created by the ball's spin causes the ball to deviate from a straight line and to follow a smooth parabolic path. However, the curveball is also a perceptual puzzle because batters often report that the flight of the ball undergoes a dramatic and nearly discontinuous shift in position as the ball nears home plate. We suggest that the perception of a discontinuous shift in position results from differences between foveal and peripheral processing.

A single system explains human speed perception

Motion is fully described by a direction and a speed. The processing of direction information by the visual system has been extensively studied; much less is known, however, about the processing of speed. Although it is generally accepted that the direction of motion is processed by a single motion system, no such consensus exists for speed. Psychophysical data from humans suggest two separate systems processing luminance-based fast and slow speeds, whereas neurophysiological recordings in monkeys generally show continuous speed representation, hinting at a single system. Although the neurophysiological findings hint at a single system, they remain inconclusive as only a limited amount of cells can be measured per study and, possibly, the putative different motion systems are anatomically separate. In three psychophysical motion adaptation experiments, we show that predictions on the basis of the two-motion system hypothesis are not met. Instead, concurrent modeling showed that both here-presented and previous data are consistent with a single system subserving human speed perception. These findings have important implications for computational models of motion processing and the low-level organization of the process.

Neural correlates of chromatic motion perception

A variety of psychophysical and neurophysiological studies suggest that chromatic motion perception in the primate brain may be performed outside the classical motion processing pathway. We addressed this provocative proposal directly by assessing the sensitivity of neurons in motion area MT to moving colored stimuli while simultaneously determining perceptual sensitivity in nonhuman primate observers. The results of these studies demonstrate a strong correspondence between neuronal and perceptual measures. Our findings testify that area MT is indeed a principal component of the neuronal substrate for color-based motion processing.

Visual sensitivity to temporal modulations of temporal noise

The present endeavor is meant (a) to provide a direct comparison between first- and second-order temporal modulation and, by so doing, (b) to eliminate all spatial clues that might have contaminated previous assessments of the second-order temporal modulation transfer function (TMTF). The second aim was achieved by means of the temporal modulation of a purely temporal white noise, a stimulus used frequently in psychoacoustics but not used as yet in visual stimulation. Luminance and contrast temporal modulation thresholds were measured with a 2AFC staircase procedure. In the first case, the mean luminance of a spatially homogeneous, 30 degrees field was modulated sinusoidally over time (first-order modulation). In the second case, the luminance of the same or of a 60 degrees field was randomized over time at a rate of 150 Hz and this temporal white noise (the carrier) was modulated sinusoidally over time (second-order modulation). First-order thresholds reproduce the classical (large field) flicker sensitivity. Second-order thresholds (measured for the first time with purely temporal stimuli) are at least 100 times higher than first-order ones, display a low-pass characteristic (at least up to 0.5 Hz) and yield a critical fusion frequency (measured at 100% modulation) of approximately 10 Hz. The data are in accord with other estimates of the TMTF of the second-order system and thus confirm the effective neutralization of the spatial cues present in these previous studies.

Perceptual motion standstill in rapidly moving chromatic displays

In motion standstill, a quickly moving object appears to stand still, and its details are clearly visible. It is proposed that motion standstill can occur when the spatiotemporal resolution of the shape and color systems exceeds that of the motion systems. For moving red-green gratings, the first- and second-order motion systems fail when the grating is isoluminant. The third-order motion system fails when the green/red saturation ratio produces isosalience (equal distinctiveness of red and green). When a variety of high-contrast red-green gratings, with different spatial frequencies and speeds, were made isoluminant and isosalient, the perception of motion standstill was so complete that motion direction judgments were at chance levels. Speed ratings also indicated that, within a narrow range of luminance contrasts and green/red saturation ratios, moving stimuli were perceived as absolutely motionless. The results provide further evidence that isoluminant color motion is perceived only by the third-order motion system, and they have profound implications for the nature of shape and color perception.

The mechanism of isoluminant chromatic motion perception

An isoluminant chromatic display is a color display in which the component colors have been so carefully equated in luminance that they stimulate only color-sensitive perceptual mechanisms and not luminance-sensitive mechanisms. The nature of the mechanism by which isoluminant chromatic motion is perceived is an important issue because color and motion processing historically have been associated with different neural pathways. Here we show that isoluminant chromatic motion (i) fails a pedestal test, (ii) has a temporal tuning function that declines to half-amplitude at 3-6 Hz, and (iii) is perceived equally well when the entire motion sequence is presented monocularly (entire motion sequence to one eye) versus interocularly (the frames of motion sequence alternate between eyes so that neither eye individually could perceive motion). These three characteristics indicate that chromatic motion is detected by the third-order motion system. Based on this theory, it was possible to take a moving isoluminant red-green grating and, by simply increasing the chromatic contrast of the green component, to generate the full gamut of motion percepts, from compelling smooth motion to motion standstill. The perception of motion standstill when the third-order mechanism is nullified indicates that there is no other motion computation available for purely chromatic motion. It follows that isoluminant chromatic motion is not computed by specialized chromatic motion mechanisms within a color pathway but by the third-order motion system at a brain level where binocular inputs of form, color, depth, and texture are simultaneously available and where selective attention can exert a major influence.

Speed-dependent motion-sensitive responses in V5: an fMRI study

This fMRI study examined motion-sensitive responses in human area V5 as a function of stimulus speed. Consistent with electrophysiological findings, we observed optimal responses at intermediate speeds of around 7 degrees/s to 30 degrees/s. The results are consistent with a nonlinear (inverted "U") dependency on speed that was also observed in V3a. V1 activation was observed to decrease linearly as speed increased. This is consistent with the fact that speed-sensitive cells in V1 have been shown to be tuned to much slower speeds than in V5.

Magnetoencephalographic investigation of human cortical area V1 using color stimuli

The aim of this study was to determine the response properties of the human visual cortex to chromatic stimuli using magnetoencephalography (MEG). Evoked responses were recorded to isoluminant red/green sinusoidal gratings for a wide range of spatial and temporal frequencies. For each condition the response was dominated by a single major component which was well modeled by an equivalent current dipole. Coregistration of MEG and MRI data provided evidence that the principal evoked cortical activity originated from visual area V1. To investigate the chromatic response properties of this area, the maximum global field power of the evoked response was plotted as a function of stimulus spatial and temporal frequency. The spatial-frequency tuning was lowpass and the temporal-frequency tuning was multimodal, with peaks at 0 and 4 Hz. The results demonstrate the use of MEG as a technique for investigating activity from discrete regions of cortex.

Order-specific and non-specific motion responses in the human visual system

A series of experiments measured direction discrimination in two-frame random block kinematograms. Blocks were presented against a uniform grey background, and were filled either with uniform grey (darker or brighter than the background; first-order blocks) or with random microtexture (isoluminant with the background; second-order blocks). Experiment 1 found that when blocks maintained their order from frame to frame, performance declined from near-perfect to chance levels as block displacement increased. When blocks switched order between frames, performance was generally worse (65-75% correct at best), but still above chance levels. Results from control experiments established that it is important to remove intensity cues in second-order patterns using a psychophysical technique, and that above-chance responses with order-switching patterns persisted, even when such intensity cues were removed or randomised. The last experiment measured the effects of block density manipulation. First-order and second-order patterns showed the same decline in Dmax performance as pattern density increased, and results from patterns containing a mixture of first- and second-order blocks could be predicted from performance obtained with each set of blocks presented separately, except at very low densities. It is concluded that both order-specific and non-specific responses are available during motion analysis, but order-specific responses tend to predominate.

Interaction of motion and color in the visual pathways

In recent years the idea of parallel and independent processing streams for different visual attributes has become a guiding principle for linking the organization, architecture and function of the visual system. Findings concerning the segregation of motion and color information have been at the forefront of the evidence in favor of the parallel processing scheme. A number of studies have shown that motion perception is impaired for isoluminant stimuli, which are thought to isolate the color system. However, there are now many studies, the results of which are incompatible with the simple idea of segregated pathways. We propose two processing streams for motion that differ mostly in their temporal characteristics. Although neither of the two motion streams is color-blind, as was originally suggested, they differ radically in the way they process color information. The view that we propose provides a framework that reconciles a number of seemingly contradictory results. Evidence to support the new framework comes from psychophysical, physiological and lesion studies.