Week 4: PSYC 236 Motion Perception Flashcards

A comprehensive vocabulary list covering types of motion, anatomical structures, and computational models from the PSYC 236 lecture on Motion Perception.

Motion

A change in position across time.

Real motion

The physical movement of an object through space.

Apparent motion

A type of motion perception derived from a bunch of static frames, such as in motion pictures or film, where no real movement occurs.

Zoetrope

A device that creates the illusion of motion from static images, demonstrating both real and apparent motion.

Wagon wheel effect

An illusion where a wheel appears to rotate at a different speed or direction than it actually is, typically seen in videos or with a flickering light source.

Motion aftereffect

A visual illusion where, after viewing a moving stimulus, a stationary object appears to move in the opposite direction.

Motion flow fields

The pattern of apparent motion of objects, surfaces, and edges in a visual scene caused by the relative motion between an observer and the scene.

Focus of expansion (FOE)

The specific point in a motion flow field from which all movement appears to originate during forward motion.

Induced motion

A phenomenon where a stationary object is perceived as moving because of the movement of another object nearby.

Reichardt detector

A model of a simple motion detector that uses two contrast detector neurons (Neuron A and Neuron B), a delay ($\Delta t$), and a coincidence detector to signal motion in a specific direction.

Akinetopsia

A clinical condition characterized by the inability to perceive motion, often associated with damage to Area MT.

Area MT (V5)

A cortical region critical for normal motion perception and integration that contains neurons with larger receptive fields than those in V1.

MST

A cortical area involved in complex motion processing, including optic flow and the perception of vection.

Aperture problem

The ambiguity that arises when a moving stimulus is viewed through a small receptive field (like those in V1), making it impossible to determine the true global motion.

Saccades

Fast eye movements that shift the gaze between different points of interest.

Smooth pursuit

Slow, continuous eye movements used to maintain fixation on a moving object.

Efference copy

A copy of a motor signal, also called corollary discharge, used by the visual system to predict and discount retinal movement caused by the observer's own eye movements.

Vection

The perception of self-motion induced by visual stimuli, such as flow fields.

Magnocellular

The pathway in the Lateral Geniculate Nucleus (LGN) that is primarily involved in the anatomy of motion perception.

TMS (Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation)

A technique that, when applied to Area MT, can cause motion perception or induced Akinetopsia, providing evidence that MT processes motion.