The spatial and temporal organisation of motion perception units in human vision

Measurements of threshold illumination levels for detection of retinally non-localised moving targets show that detection of a moving target is influenced by both the spatial and the temporal modulation of the background field. The temporal response characteristics obtained from these measurements are similar to those obtained from experiments on detection of temporal flicker. Experiments with spatially modulated background fields reveal visual mechanisms with spatial properties which are essentially independent of many stimulus parameters. The response amplitude of the spatial filter which characterises these mechanisms increases linearly as a function of background contrast and is independent of the relative orientation between the background structure and the direction of target movement. These properties are used to compute the two-dimensional spatial characteristics of mechanisms involved in the detection of moving targets.