Neural mechanisms of unconscious visual motion priming

The neural correlates of the motion priming were examined in normal young subjects using event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Visual motion perception can be uncon-sciously biased in favor of a particular direction by a pre-ceding motion in that direction. Motion priming first in-volved an enhancement of ERP amplitude about 100 ms fol-lowing the onset of motion. The amplitudes of ERP compo-nents after 350 ms were also increased. The fMRI results suggest that the early-latency effect reflects modulation of neural responses in extrastriate cortex. Higher-level visual processing areas, including cortical regions MT/MST and the intraparietal cortices were also activated. The findings provide direct evidence that unconscious priming of motion perception is the result of interaction of direction-selective neural responses to motion stimuli. The results cannot be accounted for by refractoriness of neural responses, but in-stead support a theory of motion priming based on motion opponency, as proposed in computational models.