Center-Surround Interactions in Visual Motion Processing

Abstract

This dissertation describes a series of psychophysical investigations of center-surround interactions in visual motion processing. Relying on a variety of experimental methods, the studies in this dissertation demonstrate that center-surround interactions play an important role in human motion perception. Such interactions are characterized by surround suppression at high contrast and spatial summation at low contract. I propose that these results are a perceptual correlate of center-surround interactions in the cortical area MT and provide experimental evidence that supports this link between human perception and neurophysiology.