Coherence of early motion signals

Oscillation thresholds were evaluated for detecting motion and discriminating relative motion. Three horizontally aligned Gaussian blobs oscillated horizontally, with the center in-phase or out-of-phase with the two flankers. Motion thresholds were well below those for static bisection, and involved small contrast changes (<0.25%). Remarkably, acuity was better for discriminating phase relations than for detecting rigid motion, averaging 8.7 and 11.0 arcsec, respectively, for 100 arcmin between blobs. Phase discrimination acuities were robust over separations of 20-320 arcmin and temporal frequencies of 1.5-6 Hz. Motion phase relations must be coherent among spatially separate retinal signals, carrying information about intrinsic image structure.