Cortical activation associated with determination of depth order during transparent motion perception: A normalized integrative fMRI-MEG study.

Abstract

When visual patterns drifting in different directions and/or at different speeds are superimposed on the same plane, observers perceive transparent surfaces on planes of different depths. This phenomenon is known as transparent motion perception. In this study, cortical activities were measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) to reveal the cortical dynamics associated with determination of depth order during transparent motion perception. In addition, offline eye movement measurements were performed to determine the latencies of the start of both pursuit eye movements and depth attention that are important in determination of the depth order. MEG and fMRI data were analyzed by a normalized integrative fMRI-MEG method that enables reconstruction of time-varying dipole moments of activated regions from MEG signals. Statistical analysis of fMRI data was performed to identify activated regions. The activated regions were used as spatial constraints for the reconstruction using the integrative fMRI-MEG method. We focused on the period between latencies (216-405 ms) determined by eye movement experiment, which are related to determination of the depth order. The results of integrative analysis revealed that significant neural activities were observed in the visual association area, the human middle temporal area, the intraparietal sulcus, the lateral occipital cortex, and the anterior cingulate cortex between 216 and 405 ms. These results suggest that initial eye movement and accompanying cortical activations during focused duration play an important role in determining the depth order during transparent motion perception.