Organization of contour from motion processing in primate visual cortex.

Abstract

A major objective of visual processing is the segmentation of the scene into separate objects. Relative motion is one of the most salient segmentation cues. In man and monkey, we recorded visually evoked potentials to a stimulus, designed to signal the presence of relative motion processing. Relative motion specific response components were only elicited when human observers perceive contours from relative motion. Equivalent dipole source localization of the responses indicated the involvement of primary visual cortex in man. This was corroborated by intracortical recordings in awake monkey, where sources of the specific components are located within the supra- and infragranular layers of primary visual cortex. It is concluded that V1 does not merely provide an input stage to contour from motion processing, but that segmentation information, based on relative motion, is present at this early cortical level.