The Motion Aftereffect

Book excerpt: Motion perception lies at the heart of the scientific study of vision. The motion aftereffect (MAE) is the appearance of directional movement in a stationary object or scene after the viewer has been exposed to viusal motion in the opposite direction. For example, after one has looked at a waterfall for a period of time, the scene beside the waterfall may appear to move upward when one's gaze is transfered to it. Although the phenomenon seems simple, research has revealed copmlexities in the underlying mechanisms, and offered general lessons about how the brain processes visual information. In the 1990s alone, more than 200 papers have been published on MAE, largely inspired by improved techniques for examining brain electrophysiology and by emerging new theories of motion perception.