Second-order motion perception

Second-order motion has been defined as motion in which the moving contour is
defined by contrast, texture, flicker or some other quality that does not result in
an increase in luminance or motion energy in the Fourier spectrum of the stimulus.
[7][8] There is much evidence to suggest that early processing of first- and
second-order motion is carried out by separate pathways.[9] Second-order mechanisms
have poorer temporal resolution and are low-pass in terms of the range of spatial
frequencies to which they respond. (The notion that neural responses are attuned to
frequency components of stimulation suffers from the lack of a functional rationale
and has been generally criticized by G. Westheimer (2001) in an article called "The
Fourier Theory of Vision.") Second-order motion produces a weaker motion
aftereffect unless tested with dynamically flickering stimuli.[10]

Motion integration

Some have speculated that, having extracted the hypothesized motion signals (first-
or second-order) from the retinal image, the visual system must integrate those
individual local motion signals at various parts of the visual field into a 2-
dimensional or global representation of moving objects and surfaces. (It is not
clear how this 2D representation is then converted into the perceived 3D percept)
Further processing is required to detect coherent motion or "global motion" present
in a scene.[11]

The ability of a subject to detect coherent motion is commonly tested using motion
coherence discrimination tasks. For these tasks, dynamic random-dot patterns (also
called random dot kinematograms) are used that consist in 'signal' dots moving in
one direction and 'noise' dots moving in random directions. The sensitivity to
motion coherence is assessed by measuring the ratio of 'signal' to 'noise' dots
required to determine the coherent motion direction. The required ratio is called
the motion