A Physiological Model for Motion-Stereo Integration and a Unified Explanation of Pulfrich-like Phenomena

• Published in: Vision research (Oxford) Vol. 37; no. 12; pp. 1683 - 1698
• Main Authors: QIAN, NING, ERSEN, RICHARD A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Elsevier Ltd 01.06.1997; Elsevier Science
• Subjects: Biological and medical sciences; Depth Perception - physiology; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Humans; Mathematics; Models, Biological; Motion; Motion Perception - physiology; Pattern Recognition, Visual - physiology; Perception; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Psychophysics; Space life sciences; Stereo – Pulfrich effect – Binocular disparity – [formula omitted] – [formula omitted]; Time Factors; Vision; Vision Disparity - physiology; Vision, Binocular - physiology; Motion; Human; Visual stimulus; Pulfrich effect; Stimulus movement; Information processing; Perception; Cognition; Space perception; Binocular vision; Mathematical model; Stereopsis; Modeling
• ISSN: 0042-6989; 1878-5646
• DOI: 10.1016/S0042-6989(96)00164-2

Many psychophysical and physiological experiments indicate that visual motion analysis and stereoscopic depth perception are processed together in the brain. However, little computational effort has been devoted to combining these two visual modalities into a common framework based on physiological mechanisms. We present such an integrated model in this paper. We have previously developed a physiologically realistic model for binocular disparity computation ( Qian, 1994). Here we demonstrate that under some general and physiological assumptions, our stereo vision model can be combined naturally with motion energy models to achieve motion-stereo integration. The integrated model may be used to explain a wide range of experimental observations regarding motion-stereo interaction. As an example, we show that the model can provide a unified account of the classical Pulfrich effect ( Morgan and Thompson, 1975) and the generalized Pulfrich phenomena to dynamic noise patterns ( Tyler, 1974; Falk, 1980) and stroboscopic stimuli ( Burr and Ross, 1979). © 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.