Investigation of color motion using MEG and binocular rivalry stimuli

Previous psychophysical studies have reported a few hundred millisecond difference in the reaction time (RT) to luminance versus color motion in low speed condition. Electroencephalogram (EEG) studies have reported a small difference between initial responses to luminance and color motion, but a big difference comparable to that reported in psychophysical studies has not been observed. The present study aimed to investigate late responses in low speed condition in order to clarify the difference of RTs between luminance and color motion. In general, measurement of the late responses is difficult because the late responses are weaker than the initial responses. A previous EEG study of binocular rivalry has reported that binocular rivalry stimuli amplify late responses. Therefore, we used binocular rivalry stimuli to measure late responses. Visual evoked fields were recorded with a whole-head MEG system. A rivalry-related field (RRF) was obtained from the subtraction between the rivalry and a control condition. The RRF was measured between 400 to 550 ms after the stimulus onset for each motion. Results of source localizations of RRFs had similar positions for both the luminance and the color motion. No statistically significant difference between the latencies of the two RRFs was found.