An occlusion-related mechanism of depth perception based on motion and interocular sequence.

Abstract

Objects occlude other objects in natural scenes, and this occlusive relationship increases the spatio-temporal complexity of sensory inputs to the two eyes, especially when objects are moving. We ask whether the visual system can employ clever strategies which make use of real-world constraints on inputs to the eyes to determine the depth of objects. Employing psychophysical methods, we found that occlusion-related geometric rules, which constrain the relationship between the direction of motion and the order and asynchrony of eyes, are implemented at early stages of cortical visual processing.