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Seeing multiple directions of motion—physiology and psychophysics

Nature Neuroscience volume 3, pages 270–276 (2000)Cite this article

Abstract

Dot patterns sliding transparently across one another are normally perceived as independently moving surfaces. Recordings from direction-selective neurons in area MT of the macaque suggested that this perceptual segregation did not depend on the presence of two peaks in the population activity. Rather, the visual system seemed to use overall shape of the population response to determine the number and directions of motion components. This approach explained a number of perceptual phenomena, including susceptibility of the motion system to direction metamers, motion patterns combining three or five directions incorrectly perceived by subjects as comprising only two directions. Our findings offer insights into the coding of multi-valued sensory signals and provide constraints for biologically based computational models.

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Figure 1: Direction-tuning curves and hypothetical population responses to transparent patterns.
Figure 2: Population activity profiles for transparent motion of various angles.
Figure 3: Psychophysical stimuli.
Figure 4: Psychophysical results.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by a grant from the MWF Baden-Württemberg. We are grateful to O. Braddick, N. Qian and R.S. Zemel for comments on previous versions of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, Dept. of Neurology, University of Tübingen, Auf der Morgenstelle 15, 72076, Tübingen, Germany

    Stefan Treue, Karel Hol & Hans-Jürgen Rauber

Authors
  1. Stefan Treue
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  2. Karel Hol
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  3. Hans-Jürgen Rauber
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Stefan Treue.

Supplementary information

Figure 1

(GIF 1.4 MB)

An animated visualization of our model. The model assumes that the neuronal population response across direction-selective neurons to motion containing two direction components is the scaled sum of the responses to the individual components alone

For further information, animations and images, see the authors' web page at: http://www.uni-tuebingen.de/uni/knv/Treue/transparent_motion.html

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Treue, S., Hol, K. & Rauber, HJ. Seeing multiple directions of motion—physiology and psychophysics . Nat Neurosci 3, 270–276 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/72985

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