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Updated: Jun 23, 2026

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Visualizing Visual Adaptation
Published on: April 24, 2017
Motion fading and the motion aftereffect share a common process of neural adaptation
Attention, Perception & Psychophysics
|May 12, 2009
Abstract:
After prolonged viewing of a slowly drifting or rotating pattern under strict fixation, the pattern appears to slow down and then momentarily stop. Here, we show that this motion fading occurs not only for slowly moving stimuli, but also for stimuli moving at high speed; after prolonged viewing of high-speed stimuli, the stimuli appear to slow down but not to stop. We report psychophysical evidence that the same neural adaptation process likely gives rise to motion fading and to the motion aftereffect.
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