Color and Motion

The links between color and motion detection however are fascinating and thus the two systems seem to complement each other and the benefits are worth mentioning. For example, "we would have a greater difficulty detecting the motion of an object if it occurred against a plain background"(Foley & Matlin, 2010). A further study that was relevant in supporting the hypothesis that color perception and motion perception are complementary in establishing the visual system and are interconnected anatomically to some degree is an article that can be referenced on pubmed titled "Color perception in children with autism". http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18449634 . The importance is in the textbook which states " abnormalities in the STS- which may occur in Autism- lead to diminished perception of biological motion"(Foley & Matlin, 2010). The superior temporal sulcus or STS and the connection between v1 in color perception seem to be inter connected. Further we know that "people perceive motion when color (ant not luminance) is the only cue to motion" (Cropper & Wueryer, 2005; Ruppertsbery et al. , 2006). The relationship of motion and color is established and thus are complementary systems. It is also believed that v1 is where motion perception begins and the the knowledge of color perception in the same region may localize the region if not for color perception or motion only then the region may be crucial for perception and we have two types of data being simultaneously processed. We know from the reading of the text and from article on "what birds see" that for humans color perception is not crucial to survival in most everyday tasks besides maybe the disarming of a bomb and mixing up the wires or perhaps running a red light. (Goldsmith, 2006) When asked to choose between one or the other, the fact that most color vision deficiencies are not complete blindness, and the fact that in everyday we rely more upon our visual senses of depth in motion, would lead me to choosing to have a color deficiency. The roles of both color and motion being used to process sensory data shows that neither are strictly unilateral in function, but that they function as system that interprets a whole lot of information, and that the anatomical connections demonstrate the inter dependence of the two. As we know also, color blindness leads to an acuity decrease, and thus with color deficiencies other fine detail occlusions would occur.

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Thank you,

Tammy L. Chapman