Activation of human motion processing areas during event perception

Abstract

Observers are able to segment continuous everyday activity into meaningful parts. This ability may be related to processing low-level visual cues, such as changes in motion. To address this issue, the present study combined measurement of evoked responses to event boundaries with functional identification of the extrastriate motion complex (MT+) and the frontal eye field (FEF), two regions related to motion perception and eye movements. The results provided strong evidence that MT+ is activated by event boundaries: Individuals' MT+ regions showed strong responses to event boundaries, and MT+ was collocated with a lateral posterior region that responded at event boundaries. The evidence regarding the FEF was less conclusive: The FEF showed reliable but relatively reduced responses to event boundaries, but the FEF was medial and superior to a frontal area that responded at event boundaries. These results suggest that motion cues, and possibly eye movements, may play key roles in event structure perception.