Abstract
The direction aftereffect (DAE) is a phenomenon whereby prolonged exposure to a moving stimulus biases the perceived direction of subsequent stimuli. It is believed to arise through a selective suppression of directionally tuned neurons in the visual cortex, causing shifts in the population response away from the adapted direction. Whereas most studies consider only unidirectional adaptation, here we examine how concurrent adaptation to multiple directions affects the DAE. Observers were required to judge whether a random dot kinematogram (RDK) moved clockwise or counter-clockwise relative to upwards. In different conditions, observers adapted to a stimulus comprised of directions drawn from a distribution or to bidirectional motion. Increasing the variance of normally distributed directions reduced the magnitude of the peak DAE and broadened its tuning profile. Asymmetric sampling of Gaussian and uniform distributions resulted in shifts of DAE tuning profiles consistent with changes in the perceived global direction of the adapting stimulus. Discrimination thresholds were elevated by an amount that related to the magnitude of the bias. For bidirectional adaptors, adding dots in directions away from the adapting motion led to a pronounced reduction in the DAE. This reduction was observed when dots were added in opposite or orthogonal directions to the adaptor suggesting that it may arise via inhibition from a broadly tuned normalisation pool. Preliminary simulations with a population coding model, where the gain of a direction-selective neuron is inversely proportional to its response to the adapting stimulus, suggest that it provides a parsimonious account of these adaptation effects.