Document Detail


Direct evidence that "speedlines" influence motion mechanisms.
MedLine Citation:
PMID:  12351740     Owner:  NLM     Status:  MEDLINE    
Abstract/OtherAbstract:
Determining the direction of visual motion poses a serious problem for any visual system, given the inherent ambiguities. Geisler (1999) has suggested that motion streaks left in the wake of a moving target provide a rich source of potential information that could aid in resolving direction ambiguities. Here we provide strong experimental evidence that the human visual system does in fact exploit motion streaks in direction discrimination. Masks comprising oriented random noise impeded direction discrimination of moving dots when the masks were oriented parallel to the direction of motion but had very little effect when oriented orthogonal to the direction of motion. The masking effect decreased systematically with increasing bandwidth for the parallel masks and increased with bandwidth for the orthogonal masks. Importantly, these masks had little effect on neither contrast sensitivity for detecting the moving stimuli nor for speed discrimination. Experiments with "Glass patterns" (moiré patterns constructed from random dot pairs) confirmed that misleading pattern information can impede motion detection. The results show that the oriented streaks left by moving stimuli provide fundamental information about the direction of visual motion; removing these streaks or augmenting them with erroneous streaks severely confounds motion direction discrimination.
Authors:
David C Burr; John Ross
Publication Detail:
Type:  Journal Article    
Journal Detail:
Title:  The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience     Volume:  22     ISSN:  1529-2401     ISO Abbreviation:  J. Neurosci.     Publication Date:  2002 Oct 
Date Detail:
Created Date:  2002-09-27     Completed Date:  2002-10-24     Revised Date:  2004-11-17    
Medline Journal Info:
Nlm Unique ID:  8102140     Medline TA:  J Neurosci     Country:  United States    
Other Details:
Languages:  eng     Pagination:  8661-4     Citation Subset:  IM    
Affiliation:
Istituto di Neurofisiologia del Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Pisa 56100, Italy. dave@in.pi.cnr.it
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MeSH Terms
Descriptor/Qualifier:
Contrast Sensitivity / physiology*
Data Display
Discrimination (Psychology) / physiology
Humans
Moire Topography / methods
Motion
Motion Perception / physiology*
Pattern Recognition, Visual / physiology
Photic Stimulation / instrumentation,  methods
Sensory Thresholds / physiology

From MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine


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