Motion Aftereffect: A Global Mechanism for the Perception of Rotation

Abstract

Observers adapted to motion by looking at rotating logarithmic spirals. They were tested with a stationary mirror image of the adapting spiral in which all contours were at 90 degrees to those of the first spiral. Motion aftereffects were reported in the contrarotational direction--that is, observers who had seen clockwise rotating motion reported seeing counterclockwise aftereffects. These aftereffects lasted one-third as long as the aftereffects obtained when the adapting spiral was used as the test figure. These two aftereffects were shown to have different storage properties, thereby indexing the operation of at least two different mechanism. We interpret the motion aftereffect that is obtained with the mirror-image stimulus as indicative of the existence of global rotation detectors.

Attentional modulation in motion aftereffect

“…The findings that the expansion / contraction MAE and rotation MAE are elicited independently from each other (Beverley & Regan, 1979;Cavanagh & Favreau 1980;Hershenson, 1987) suggest that the specialized motion detectors for expansion / contraction and rotation exist independently in the human Simple translation MAE MAE in depth visual system. If the detectors for the specific visual stimulus are implemented, it is reasonable to predict that the concerned stimulus could he easily discriminated from background stimuli that have different value in the dimension alone which the attributes of those stimuli are defined.…”

“…He showed that the MAE of rotation, contraction and motion in depth could be elicited independently of that induced by rotating Archimedes spirals if appropriate test stimulus for each MAE is used. Cavanagh and Favreau(1980) also suggested that the rotation MAE was independent of the simple translation MAE.…”

“…The selfmotion and the eye movement of the observers also elicit complicated visual motion on the retina. The MAE resultant from these various kinds of motion have been reported to date (Bressan, Tomat, & Vallorti ,gara, 1992;Cavanagh & Favreau, 1980;Hershenson, 1987;Petersik, Shepard. & Malsh, 1984;Regan & Beverley, 1978).…”

Induced movement in the visual modality: An overview.

“…This is an extension of proposals based on aftereffect evidence. Cavanagh and Favreau (1980) showed that movement aftereffects can be observed when adaptation and test stimuli are mirror-image logarithmic spirals. Each part of one spiral is orthogonal to the corresponding part of the other spiral, so that known motion-sensitive neurons would not be stimulated.…”

The motion aftereffect reloaded

“…The essential principle of population coding in the MAE is still universally accepted, but discoveries made possible with the introduction of new experimental techniques indicate that major changes to theoretical explanations of the MAE are required. These discoveries include work in human psychophysics [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23], primate physiology [24][25][26][27], human neuroimaging [28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37], human electrophysiology (Visual Evoked Potentials -VEPs) [38][39][40][41][42] and transcranial stimulation [43][44][45]. Results indicate that the MAE is an amalgam of neural adaptation at several visual cortical sites.…”