A discontinuity in motion perception during fixational drift

Abstract

The human visual system is tasked with perceiving stable and moving objects despite ever-present eye movements. Normally, our visual system performs this task exceptionally well; indeed, under conditions with frames of reference, our ability to detect relative motion exceeds the sampling limits of foveal cones. However, during fixational drift, if an image is programmed to move in a direction consistent with retinal slip, little to no motion is perceived, even if this motion is amplified. We asked: Would a stimulus moving in a direction consistent with retinal slip, but with a smaller magnitude across the retina, also appear relatively stable? We used an adaptive optics scanning light ophthalmoscope to deliver stimuli that moved contingent to retinal motion and measured subjects’ perceived motion under conditions with world-fixed background content. We also tested under conditions with background content closer to and farther from the stimuli. We found a sharp discontinuity in motion perception. Stimuli moving in a direction consistent with retinal slip, no matter how small, appear to have relatively little to no motion, whereas stimuli moving in the same direction as eye motion appear to be moving. Displacing background content to greater than 4° from the stimuli diminishes the effects of this phenomenon.