Illusory motion due to causal time filtering

Abstract

A new class of patterns, composed of repeating patches of asymmetric intensity profile, elicit strong perception of illusory motion. We propose that the main cause of this illusion is erroneous estimation of image motion induced by fixational eye movements. Image motion is estimated with spatial and temporal energy filters, which are symmetric in space, but asymmetric (causal) in time. That is, only the past, but not the future, is used to estimate the temporal energy. It is shown that such filters mis-estimate the motion of locally asymmetric intensity signals at certain spatial frequencies. In an experiment the perception of the different illusory signals was quantitatively compared by nulling the illusory motion with opposing real motion, and was found to be predicted well by the model. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.