Motion integration across apertures generates a global motion aftereffect in an unadapted region

摘要

The motion of a straight edge seen through a single aperture is inherently ambiguous, known as the aperture problem. While the phenomenal direction perception is usually perpendicular to the orientation of the edge in a circular aperture and thus does not directly specify the motion direction of objects in the environment, the true direction of object motion could be discovered by appropriately integrating motion across multiple apertures. How does this integration affect the motion processing in the occluded regions of the moving object outside of the apertures? Following exposure to diamond-shaped objects moving behind an occluder with only part of the four edges visible through four circular apertures, we observed a motion aftereffect with a dynamic test patch presented in an area not overlapping with any of the apertures, the effect of which is consistent with adaptation to global motion through integration of local apertures. There was no motion aftereffect when the same local motions within the four apertures were presented out of synchrony and could not be integrated. This suggests that the observed motion aftereffect could not be explained by simply summing the local motion energies and instead dependent on the emergent global motion perception of the partially occluded object.