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Motion illusions as optimal percepts

Nature Neuroscience volume 5, pages 598–604 (2002)Cite this article

Abstract

The pattern of local image velocities on the retina encodes important environmental information. Although humans are generally able to extract this information, they can easily be deceived into seeing incorrect velocities. We show that these 'illusions' arise naturally in a system that attempts to estimate local image velocity. We formulated a model of visual motion perception using standard estimation theory, under the assumptions that (i) there is noise in the initial measurements and (ii) slower motions are more likely to occur than faster ones. We found that specific instantiation of such a velocity estimator can account for a wide variety of psychophysical phenomena.

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Figure 1: Intersection of constraints.
Figure 2: Insufficiency of either VA, IOC or FT rules as an explanation for human perception of a horizontally moving rhombus.
Figure 3: Likelihood functions for three local patches of a horizontally translating diamond stimulus, computed using equation (4).
Figure 4: Predictions of ideal observer for rhombus stimuli.
Figure 5: Comparison of ideal observer (solid lines) to a variety of published psychophysical data (circles).

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Acknowledgements

Y.W. and E.H.A. were supported by US National Eye Institute R01 EY11005 to E.H.A. E.P.S. was supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Sloan-Swartz Center for Theoretical Visual Neuroscience at New York University. We thank J. McDermott, M. Banks, M. Landy, W. Geisler and the anonymous referees for comments on previous versions of this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computer Science and Engineering, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Givat Ram Campus, Jerusalem, 91904, Israel

    Yair Weiss

  2. Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Center for Neural Science and Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University, 4 Washington Place, New York, 10003, New York, USA

    Eero P. Simoncelli

  3. Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, 02139, Massachusetts, USA

    Edward H. Adelson

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  1. Yair Weiss
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Correspondence to Yair Weiss.

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Weiss, Y., Simoncelli, E. & Adelson, E. Motion illusions as optimal percepts. Nat Neurosci 5, 598–604 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn0602-858

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