Motion-induced blindness

Bonnh et al. attributed the causes of the illusion to attentional mechanisms, arguing that the visual system operates in a winner-takes-all manner.

MIB reappearance is attributable to the Right hemisphere, whose "discrepancy detector" cognitive style assesses all possibilities, and therefore disagrees with the biased decision to ignore the bright yellow stimulus.

In their study, Graf et al. (2002) stereoscopically presented a moving grid stimulus set behind, in front of, or in the same plane as the static dots.

Although to a lesser extent, MIB did nonetheless occur in the conditions where the perceptual occlusion was not taking place (targets were in front of the mask).

Hsu et al. (2004) compared MIB to a similar phenomenon of perceptual filling-in (PFI), which likewise reveals a striking dissociation between the percept and the sensory input.

Since MBI and PFI show to be structurally similar, it seems plausible that MIB can be a phenomenon responsible for completing missing information across the blind spot and scotomas where motion is involved.

Wallis and Arnold (2009) propose a plausible explanation of target disappearance in MIB by linking it to the processes responsible for motion streak suppression.

[15] A different explanatory approach by New and Scholl (2008) proposes that the phenomenon is another instance of our visual system's endeavor to provide clear and accurate perception.

[16] Because the static targets appear to be invariant with respect to the background motion, the visual system removes them from our awareness, discarding it as being contrary to the logic of perception and real life situations; thus treating it as a piece of disaffiliated retina or a scotoma.

In this demonstration the observer focuses at the flickering green dot in the middle. After about 10 seconds, the observer sees one, two or all three of the static yellow dots arranged at the corners of an imaginary equilateral triangle disappear and then reappear. Sometimes the observer sees these two dots moving. These disappearances and reappearances continue pseudo-randomly [ 1 ] for as long as the observer cares to look.