Two carriers for motion perception: color and luminance
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Updated: Aug 14, 2026

Enabling High Grayscale Resolution Displays and Accurate Response Time Measurements on Conventional Computers
Published on: February 29, 2012
T V Papathomas1, A Gorea, B Julesz
1Visual Perception Research Department, AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ 07974.
Abstract:
Starting with the experiments of Ramachandran and Gregory (Nature, 275, 55-56, 1978), several psychophysical studies in apparent motion (AM) have established that the perception of motion is significantly impaired at equiluminance. Still debated, however, is whether color alone can resolve ambiguities in AM. We report here on several psychophysical experiments, the quantitative results of which indicate that color does play a substantial role in AM. These findings seem to support recently proposed neurophysiological frameworks according to which there exist significant interactions among the neuronal pathways mediating the perception of basic visual attributes such as color, motion, form and depth.
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