Asymmetric interaction between motion and stereopsis revealed by concurrent adaptation

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Visual Perception
• Computational Neuroscience

Background:

• Contingent aftereffects suggest joint processing of motion and stereopsis.
• The reciprocal nature of this encoding has not been systematically investigated.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the asymmetric encoding of motion and stereopsis.
• To re-evaluate contingent aftereffects in visual perception.

Main Methods:

• Concurrent adaptation paradigm.
• Probing perception of direction- and disparity-defined surfaces.
• Adaptation to unidirectional motion at a specific binocular disparity.

Main Results:

• A strong asymmetry was found: disparity perception was impaired by motion adaptation, but motion perception was not affected by disparity adaptation.
• This asymmetry was modulated when stimuli with opposing motion and disparity were introduced.

Conclusions:

• The findings challenge previous interpretations of contingent aftereffects.
• Suggests an inherent asymmetry in the neural mechanisms for motion and stereopsis processing in the human visual cortex.