Volume 17, Number 2,
Issue of January 15, 1997
pp. 804-818
Copyright ©1997 Society for Neuroscience
Detection and Discrimination of First- and Second-Order Motion in
Patients with Unilateral Brain Damage
Received July 15, 1996; revised Oct. 25, 1996; accepted Nov. 1, 1996.
Mark W. Greenlee1 and
Andy T. Smith2
1 Neurologische Universitätsklinik, Freiburg,
Germany, and 2 Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway
College, University of London, Egham, Surrey, United Kingdom
The present investigation explored the extent to which extrastriate
cortex is necessary for various aspects of motion processing and
whether the processing of first-order (Fourier) and second-order (non-Fourier) motion involves the same extrastriate cortical regions. Orientation, direction, and speed discrimination thresholds were measured in 21 patients with unilateral damage to the lateral occipital, temporal, or posterior parietal cortex. Their results were
compared with those of 14 age-matched control subjects. The stimuli
were static random-dot noise patterns, the luminance of which
(first-order) or contrast (second-order) was modulated by a drifting
sinusoid. Each image was presented at an eccentricity of 5.6 deg in one
of the four visual quadrants. The contrasts required to identify
orientation and direction were measured in a forced-choice paradigm for
three speeds (1.5, 3, and 6 deg/sec). Speed discrimination performance
was measured for stimuli presented simultaneously in two of the four
quadrants. The results indicate the following: (1) orientation
thresholds were increased only slightly in the patients; (2) direction
thresholds were modestly elevated, and this effect was more pronounced
for second-order stimuli than for first-order stimuli; (3) speed
discrimination thresholds were elevated significantly in the patients
with lesions in the region bordering superior-temporal and
lateral-occipital cortex; and (4) speed discrimination thresholds for
first-order stimuli were more elevated than those for second-order
stimuli. The results suggest that there is substantial overlap in the
cortical areas involved in first- and second-order speed
discrimination.
Key words:
motion perception;
direction discrimination;
speed
discrimination;
second-order motion;
human cortex;
contrast
sensitivity;
spatiotemporal vision;
psychophysics