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Motion direction, speed and orientation in binocular matching

Nature volume 410, pages 690–694 (2001)Cite this article

Abstract

The spatial differences between the images seen by the two eyes, called binocular disparities, can be used to recover the volumetric (three-dimensional) aspects of a scene. The computation of disparity depends upon the correct identification of corresponding features in the two images. Understanding what image features are used by the brain to solve this matching problem is one of the main issues in stereoscopic vision1. Many cortical neurons in visual areas V1 (ref. 2), MT (refs 3, 4) and MST (refs 5, 6) that are tuned to binocular disparity are also tuned to orientation, motion direction and speed. Although psychophysical work has shown that motion direction7 can facilitate binocular matching, the psychophysical literature on the role of orientation is mixed8,9, and it has been argued that speed differences are ineffective in aiding correspondence7. Here we use a different psychophysical paradigm to show that the visual system uses similarities in orientation, motion direction and speed to achieve binocular correspondence. These results indicate that cells that multiplex orientation, motion direction, speed and binocular disparity may help to solve the binocular matching problem.

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Figure 1: Top view of the geometry of the binocular matching problem.
Figure 2: Experimental procedure.
Figure 3: Results of experiment 1 showing the role of bar orientation and bar number.
Figure 4: Results of experiments 2 and 3 showing the roles of motion direction and speed.

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Acknowledgements

R.v.E. was supported by a NIH grant awarded to B.A. and by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, and B.A was supported in part by NIH.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. MIT Deparment of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Cambridge, 02139, Massachusetts, USA

    Raymond van Ee & Barton L. Anderson

  2. Utrecht University, Helmholtz Institute, Princeton Plein 5, Utrecht, 3584CC, The Netherlands

    Raymond van Ee

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  1. Raymond van Ee
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  2. Barton L. Anderson
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Correspondence to Barton L. Anderson.

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van Ee, R., Anderson, B. Motion direction, speed and orientation in binocular matching. Nature 410, 690–694 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/35070569

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