Visual motion perception after brain damage: I. Deficits in global motion perception.

We report on the test results of a group of 32 mostly unilaterally brain-damaged patients examined for global visual motion perception. Three of these patients had severely impaired visual motion perception in their contralateral visual half-field, a deficit remarkably similar to the perceptual defects found in V5-lesioned monkeys. Two of these three patients had a right-hemisphere lesion; the remaining one had a left-hemisphere lesion. We conclude that both hemispheres of the human brain contain an area, functionally equivalent to V5, which subserves visual motion perception in the contralateral visual half-field. Lesion analysis revealed that this area is located in the posterior medial temporal gyrus.