Differential cortical processing of local and global motion information in biological motion: An event-related potential study

To reveal the neural dynamics underlying biological motion processing, we introduced a novel golf-swing point-light motion (PLM) stimulus with an adaptation paradigm and measured event-related potentials (ERPs). In the adaptation phase, PLM and scrambled PLM (sPLM) stimuli were presented; a static point-lights stimulus was also presented as a control condition. In the subsequent test phase, PLM or sPLM stimuli were presented. We measured ERPs from the onset of the test phase. Two negative components were observed and modulated differently: the amplitude of the N1 component was significantly attenuated by PLM and sPLM adaptation stimuli compared with the static point-light adaptation stimulus, whereas the amplitude of the N2 component in response to the PLM test stimulus was significantly attenuated only by the PLM adaptation stimulus. The amplitude of the N2 component in response to the PLM test stimulus was significantly larger than that in response to the sPLM test stimulus when a sPLM or static adaptation stimulus was used. These findings indicate that the N1 component is sensitive to local motion information while the N2 component is sensitive to the presence of a coherent form conveyed by global motion.