Illusory position shift induced by plaid motion

In the motion-induced position shift (MIPS), the position of a moving pattern tapered by a stationary envelope is perceived to shift in the direction of the motion. It was found that plaid motion also elicited a MIPS in the direction of global motion and this global MIPS could not be predicted by the average of the local MIPSs due to component motions. We also used a pseudo plaid pattern and again observed a global MIPS that could not be predicted by the local MIPSs due to the components of the pseudo plaid pattern. We suggest the possibility that the receptive-field positions of global motion detectors shift in the direction opposite to global motion, resulting in a positional displacement in activation via population coding. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.