Powerful motion illusion caused by temporal asymmetries in ON and OFF visual pathways

J Neurophysiol. 2006 Jun;95(6):3928-32. doi: 10.1152/jn.01335.2005.

Abstract

Successive presentations of Glass patterns (randomly positioned pairs of dots oriented in a coherent pattern) create a strong sense of global motion along the orientation of the pattern, but ambiguous in direction. Here we report that dynamic "anti-Glass" patterns, created by successive pairs of globally structured pairs of opposite polarity, create an even more powerful motion illusion that is unambiguous in direction: the dark dots always move toward the light. The motion can be cancelled and reversed by introducing a real delay in the presentation of the light dots, suggesting that the effective stimulation of the light is about 3 ms faster than the dark dots. The most plausible explanation for this is that human on channels are faster than off channels, as has been shown in the macaque.

MeSH terms

  • Humans
  • Illusions / physiology*
  • Motion Perception / physiology*
  • Motion*
  • Photic Stimulation / methods*
  • Time Factors
  • Visual Pathways / physiology*