Search research articles

ABOUT JoVE

Overview Leadership Blog JoVE Help Center

AUTHORS

Publishing Process Editorial Board Scope & Policies Peer Review FAQ Submit

LIBRARIANS

Testimonials Subscriptions Access Resources Library Advisory Board FAQ

RESEARCH

JoVE Journal Methods Collections JoVE Encyclopedia of Experiments Archive

EDUCATION

JoVE Core JoVE Business JoVE Science Education JoVE Lab Manual Faculty Resource Center Faculty Site

Terms & Conditions of Use

Related Concept Videos

Prosopagnosia

Prosopagnosia

Prosopagnosia, also known as face blindness, is the inability to recognize faces. In severe cases, individuals with prosopagnosia may not recognize close family members, including parents and spouses, by their faces. For instance, someone with prosopagnosia might walk past their child in a crowd, only realizing their mistake upon noticing their child's distinctive backpack or favorite jacket. Prosopagnosia specifically impairs facial recognition, while the recognition of other objects or...

Depth Perception and Spatial Vision

Depth Perception and Spatial Vision

Depth perception is the ability to perceive objects three-dimensionally. It relies on two types of cues: binocular and monocular. Binocular cues depend on the combination of images from both eyes and how the eyes work together. Since the eyes are in slightly different positions, each eye captures a slightly different image. This disparity between images, known as binocular disparity, helps the brain interpret depth. When the brain compares these images, it determines the distance to an object.

Visual Agnosia

Visual Agnosia

Visual agnosia is a condition characterized by the inability to recognize visually presented objects despite having normal vision. For instance, a person with visual agnosia can describe the shape and color of an object but cannot identify or name it. This impairment does not affect their visual field, acuity, color vision, brightness discrimination, language, or memory. An example of this condition in a social setting is someone at a dinner party asking for "that silver thing with a round end"...

Association Areas of the Cortex

Association Areas of the Cortex

Association areas are regions of the cerebral cortex that do not have a specific sensory or motor function. Instead, they integrate and interpret information from various sources to enable higher cognitive processes such as memory, learning, and decision-making. Some key association areas include the following:
Prefrontal Association Area: This area is located in the frontal lobe and is involved in planning, decision-making, and moderating social behavior. It connects with primary motor areas,...

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by

Same author

Motivation biases behavior but not perception.

Communications psychology·2026

Same author

Long-term Adaptation in VR: Retention of Altered Sensorimotor Contingencies through Redirected Walking.

IEEE transactions on visualization and computer graphics·2026

Same author

The role of feedback for sensorimotor decisions under risk.

Journal of vision·2026

Same author

Non-rigid motion: Blowing in the wind.

Current biology : CB·2025

Same author

Flow parsing as causal source separation allows fast and parallel object and self-motion estimation.

Communications biology·2025

Same author

Optic flow, a rich source of optic information for harbour seals (Phoca vitulina).

The Journal of experimental biology·2025

Search research articles

Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 6, 2026

Stimulus-specific Cortical Visual Evoked Potential Morphological Patterns

Stimulus-specific Cortical Visual Evoked Potential Morphological Patterns

Published on: May 12, 2019

Category-specific interference of object recognition with biological motion perception.

Karin Wittinghofer¹, Marc H E de Lussanet, Markus Lappe

¹Psychologisches Institut II and Otto Creutzfeldt Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience, Westf. Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Fliednerstrasse 21, Münster, Germany. k.wittinghofer@uni-muenster.de

Journal of Vision

|November 26, 2010

Summary

Recognizing human actions from point-light displays is usually easy. However, complex objects, especially human shapes, interfere with biological motion perception due to shared brain processing.

More Related Videos

Eye Movement Monitoring of Memory

Eye Movement Monitoring of Memory

Published on: August 15, 2010

Perceptual and Category Processing of the Uncanny Valley Hypothesis' Dimension of Human Likeness: Some Methodological Issues

Perceptual and Category Processing of the Uncanny Valley Hypothesis' Dimension of Human Likeness: Some Methodological Issues

Published on: June 3, 2013

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Jun 6, 2026

Stimulus-specific Cortical Visual Evoked Potential Morphological Patterns

Stimulus-specific Cortical Visual Evoked Potential Morphological Patterns

Published on: May 12, 2019

Eye Movement Monitoring of Memory

Eye Movement Monitoring of Memory

Published on: August 15, 2010

Perceptual and Category Processing of the Uncanny Valley Hypothesis' Dimension of Human Likeness: Some Methodological Issues

Perceptual and Category Processing of the Uncanny Valley Hypothesis' Dimension of Human Likeness: Some Methodological Issues

Published on: June 3, 2013

Area of Science:

Cognitive neuroscience
Visual perception
Human action recognition

Background:

Human action recognition from point-light displays is robust against motion masking.
Perception of biological motion is impaired when point lights are replaced by complex objects.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate how complex objects, particularly human shapes, interfere with biological motion perception.
To determine if object inversion or scrambling affects this interference.

Main Methods:

Reaction time task to assess walking direction perception (forward/backward).
Detection in noise task to evaluate performance with different local elements.
Comparison of object categories (general complex objects vs. human shapes) as local elements.

Main Results:

Complex objects as local elements significantly impaired biological motion perception.
Human shapes caused greater impairment than other object categories.
Inverting or scrambling human shapes restored walking perception performance.

Conclusions:

There is an interference between object perception and biological motion recognition.
This interference is likely due to shared neural processing capacities.
The human brain shows specific sensitivity to human-like stimuli during motion perception.