Contributions of the Visual Ventral Pathway to Long-Range Apparent Motion

Abstract

Objects displaced intermittently across the visual field will nonetheless give an illusion of continuous motion [called apparent motion (AM)] under many common conditions. It is believed that form perception is of minor importance in determining AM, and that AM is mediated by motion-sensitive areas in the “where” pathway of the cortex. However, form and motion typically interact in specific ways when natural objects move through the environment. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure cortical activation to long-range AM, compared to short-range AM and flicker, while we varied stability of structural differences between forms. Long-range AM activated the anterior-temporal lobe in the visual ventral pathway, and the response varied according to the form stability. The results suggest that long-range AM is associated with neural systems for form perception.