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Visual Agnosia

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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...

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Dec 18, 2025

Author Spotlight: Assessment of Visual Acuity in Central Vision Loss Through Motion-Based Peripheral Vision Testing

Author Spotlight: Assessment of Visual Acuity in Central Vision Loss Through Motion-Based Peripheral Vision Testing

Published on: February 23, 2024

Apparent Motion Induces Activity Suppression in Early Visual Cortex and Impairs Visual Detection.

Lu Shen^1,2,3, Biao Han^4,2,3, Floris P de Lange³

¹School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, 510631, China.

The Journal of Neuroscience : the Official Journal of the Society for Neuroscience

|June 10, 2020

Summary

Apparent motion (AM) impairs object detection by suppressing neural activity in early visual cortex, not by increasing it as previously thought. This neural suppression directly predicts reduced detectability of stimuli along the motion path.

Keywords:

apparent motion early visual cortex fMRI masking population receptive field

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Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Visual Perception
Cognitive Science

Background:

Apparent motion (AM) is an optical illusion where discrete stimuli in sequence create a perception of movement.
AM is known to cause impaired detectability of stimuli on its path, termed AM-induced masking.
Previous hypotheses suggested AM increases neural activity in early visual cortex, interfering with stimulus representation.

Purpose of the Study:

To test the hypothesis that AM-induced masking results from increased neural competition in early visual cortex.
To investigate the neural mechanisms underlying AM-induced masking using fMRI.
To determine if AM suppresses or enhances neural activity along the perceived motion path.

Main Methods:

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to measure blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) responses in human early visual cortex (V1 and V2).
Population receptive field (pRF) methods were employed to analyze neural responses along the AM path.
Participants (25 adults) underwent fMRI scanning while experiencing AM-induced masking.

Main Results:

Contrary to the hypothesis, AM significantly suppressed BOLD responses in early visual cortex (V1 and V2) along the motion path.
This suppression occurred even in visual regions not directly stimulated by the AM inducers.
The degree of neural activity suppression correlated with the reduction in stimulus detectability.

Conclusions:

The findings provide direct empirical evidence for suppressive neural mechanisms underlying AM-induced masking.
Illusory motion can impair visual perception by actively suppressing neural activity at early cortical stages.
This challenges previous notions of facilitatory interference and highlights a suppressive role of AM in visual processing.