Psychophysical evidence of differential latencies of colour inputs to motion perception

Abstract

A novel psychophysical observation allows the determination of the relative latencies with which long, middle, and short cone signals provide input to motion perception. It is known that when two spatially displaced isoluminant stimuli in spectrally different colours are simultaneously presented, any temporal lag between the perception of the two will, due to the spatial displacement, cause the perception of apparent motion. The illusion reported here occurs through the inadvertent production of spatial displacement; peripheral observation of the boundary between two differently-coloured neighbouring areas which alternately interchange colours leads, due to transverse chromatic aberration caused by the eye's optics, to the formation of a double boundary on the retina, the serial perceptions of which create the sensation of motion. By offsetting the relative temporal phases of any two colours we have determined the relative magnitude of the latencies with which they provide input to motion perception. In all subjects motion of blue is perceived after that of red, and green is perceived after that of blue. The origins of these latencies are unclear.