Properties of smooth pursuit and visual motion reaction time to second-order motion stimuli

A large number of psychophysical and neurophysiological studies have demonstrated that smooth pursuit eye movements are tightly related to visual motion perception. This could be due to the fact that visual motion sensitive cortical areas such as meddle temporal (MT), medial superior temporal (MST) areas are involved in motion perception as well as pursuit initiation. Although the directional-discrimination and perceived target velocity tasks are used to evaluate visual motion perception, it is still uncertain whether the speed of visual motion perception, which is determined by visuomotor reaction time (RT) to a small target, is related to pursuit initiation. Therefore, we attempted to determine the relationship between pursuit latency/acceleration and the visual motion RT which was measured to the visual motion stimuli that moved leftward or rightward. The participants were instructed to fixate on a stationary target and press one of the buttons corresponding to the direction of target motion as soon as possible once the target starts to move. We applied five different visual motion stimuli including first- and second-order motion for smooth pursuit and visual motion RT tasks. It is well known that second-order motion induces lower retinal image motion, which elicits weaker responses in MT and MST compared to first-order motion stimuli. Our results showed that pursuit initiation including latency and initial eye acceleration were suppressed by second-order motion. In addition, second-order motion caused a delay in visual motion RT. The better performances in both pursuit initiation and visual motion RT were observed for first-order motion, whereas second-order (theta motion) induced remarkable deficits in both variables. Furthermore, significant Pearson’s correlation and within-subjects correlation coefficients were obtained between visual motion RT and pursuit latency/acceleration. Our findings support the suggestion that there is a common neuronal pathway involved in both pursuit initiation and the speed of visual motion perception.