PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Takahiro Kawabe
AU  - Masataka Sawayama
TI  - A Computational Mechanism for Seeing Dynamic Deformation
AID  - 10.1523/ENEURO.0278-19.2020
DP  - 2020 Mar 01
TA  - eneuro
PG  - ENEURO.0278-19.2020
VI  - 7
IP  - 2
4099  - http://www.eneuro.org/content/7/2/ENEURO.0278-19.2020.short
4100  - http://www.eneuro.org/content/7/2/ENEURO.0278-19.2020.full
SO  - eNeuro2020 Mar 01; 7
AB  - Human observers perceptually discriminate the 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 deforming bar as the stimulus, we showed that the spatial frequency of deformation was a critical determinant of deformation perception. Simulating the response of direction-selective units (i.e., MT pattern motion cells) to stimuli, we found that the perception of dynamic deformation was well explained by assuming a higher-order mechanism monitoring the spatial pattern of direction responses. Our model with the higher-order mechanism also successfully explained the appearance of a visual illusion wherein a static bar apparently deforms against a tilted drifting grating. In particular, it was the lower spatial frequencies in this pattern that strongly contributed to the deformation perception. Finally, by manipulating the luminance of the static bar, we observed that the mechanism for the illusory deformation was more sensitive to luminance than contrast cues.