Neural Mechanisms of Illusory Motion: Evidence from ERP Study

Abstract

ERPs were used to examine the neural correlates of illusory motion, by presenting the Rice Wave illusion (CI), its two variants (WI and NI) and a real motion video (RM). Results showed that: Firstly, RM elicited a more negative deflection than CI, NI and WI between 200–350ms. Secondly, between 500–600ms, CI elicited a more positive deflection than NI and WI, and RM elicited a more positive deflection than CI, what's more interesting was the sequential enhancement of brain activity with the corresponding motion strength. We inferred that the former component might reflect the successful encoding of the local motion signals in detectors at the lower stage; while the latter one might be involved in the intensive representations of visual input in real/illusory motion perception, this was the whole motion-signal organization in the later stage of motion perception. Finally, between 1185–1450 ms, a significant positive component was found between illusory/real motion tasks than NI (no motion). Overall, we demonstrated that there was a stronger deflection under the corresponding lager motion strength. These results reflected not only the different temporal patterns between illusory and real motion but also extending to their distinguishing working memory representation and storage.