Perception of first- and second-order motion: separable neurological mechanisms?

An unresolved issue in visual motion perception is how distinct are the processes underlying "first-order" and "second-order" motion. The former is defined by spatiotemporal variations of luminance and the latter by spatiotemporal variations in other image attributes, such as contrast or depth. Here we describe two neurological patients with focal unilateral lesions whose contrasting perceptual deficits on psychophysical tasks of "first-order" and "second-order" motion are related to the maps of the human brain established by functional neuroimaging and gross anatomical features. We used a relatively fine-grained neocortical parcellation method applied to high-resolution MRI scans of the patients' brains to illustrate a subtle, yet highly specific dissociation in the visual motion system in humans. Our results suggest that the two motion systems are mediated by regionally separate mechanisms from an early stage of cortical processing.