A computational mechanism for seeing dynamic deformation

Abstract

Human observers are able to perceptually discriminate dynamic deformation of materials in the real world. However, the psychophysical and neural mechanisms responsible for the perception of dynamic deformation have not been fully elucidated. By using a visual illusion wherein a static bar apparently deforms against a background grating’s orientation and spatial frequency, we show that the spatial and directional patterns of the simulated responses of direction-selective units (i.e., MT pattern motion cells) consistently explain an observer’s perception of dynamic deformation. Simulating the direction-selective unit’s responses to stimuli, we found that the perception of dynamic deformation was based on the unit’s higher-order mechanism monitoring the spatial modulation of direction responses. The results indicate that the perception of dynamic deformation is dependent on a high-level neural mechanism monitoring the spatial patterns of direction-selective units of MT areas.