Differences in temporal frequency tuning between the two binocular mechanisms for seeing motion in depth

There are two types of binocular cues available for perception of motion in depth. One is the binocular disparity change in time and the other is the velocity difference between the left and the right retinal images (inter-ocular velocity differences). We measured the luminance contrast threshold for seeing motion in depth while isolating either of the cues at various temporal modulations of velocity in the stimulus. To isolate disparity cues, dynamic random-dot stereograms were used (the disparity condition) while binocularly uncorrelated random-dot kinematograms were used to isolate velocity cues (the velocity condition). Results showed that sensitivity peaked at a temporal frequency (approximately 1 cps) in the velocity condition while the peak in the disparity condition was at the lowest frequency (0.35 cps) or at least at a frequency lower than that in the velocity condition. This suggests that the visual system has different temporal frequency properties for the velocity and disparity cues for motion in depth.