The Human Visual System and its Role in Motion Perception

Motion is perceived through several perceptual pathways including vision, vestibular, somatosensory and auditory. As is the case in any instrumentation system there are multiple layers of organization in the human perceptual process. The transduction or sensation process involves sensing the ambient energy to be measured and converting it to some other form of energy – usually electrical – for processing. The next step is to adjust the signal into one that is more meaningful. The final step is rendering the signal into some convenient display format for the instrumentation system as well as the case of human, perception. The two terms, sensation and perception are frequently and incorrectly used interchangeably. In this paper the discussion includes both sensation and perception, with the ultimate goal of describing the role of vision in motion perception. The architecture of the human eye defines its performance as a sensor. Perception actually occurs as a consequence of the neuronal output of the eye and the processing in the central nervous system (CNS). These characteristics of vision are interrelated to produce visual perception: These can be defined in engineering terms and measured and contribute to the visual perception of motion. It is this visual perception of motion that is the main thrust of the paper and dovetails with a second paper that treats visual vestibular interaction.