Electrical responses to short-range Kinematogram displays: An occipital lobe global motion process in humans?

Abstract

Recently some evidence has been presented to suggest global organising function within V1. Gray, Konig, Engel and Singer (1989) presented the results of multi-unit responses simultaneously recorded from spatially separate sites in cortical area 17 of the cat. Presenting appropriately oriented moving light bars, the authors found that neurons in spatially separate columns could synchronise their response. They found "that synchronisation depends on global features of the stimuli such as coherent motion and continuity, which are not reflected by the local responses alone" (p. 335). Such a process described for the cat, may underlie the pattern of results found here for the extraction of coherent motion from kinematogram displays in humans.