Extrastriate area MT is specialized for processing visual motion and may be an important component of the first-order motion system. Most MT neurons are exquisitely sensitive to luminance contrast, but are not completely silenced at equiluminance (Dobkins & Albright,
1994; Gegenfurtner et al.,
1994; Saito, Tanaka, Isono, Yasuda, & Mikami,
1989; Seidemann, Poirson, Wandell, & Newsome,
1999). These response properties are expected from the copious magnocellular input to MT neurons. Magnocellular neurons, while tuned closely for luminance, receive variable proportions of input from L and M cones, which results in a significant population response even at equiluminance (Lee, Martin, & Valberg,
1988; Logothetis, Schiller, Charles, & Hurlbert,
1990; Thiele, Dobkins, & Albright,
1999). Furthermore, magnocellular neurons do not combine cone inputs linearly and thus can respond to chromatic borders even though they are blind to the contrast sign across the border (Hubel & Livingstone,
1990; Kruger,
1979; Lee, Martin, & Valberg,
1989; Schiller & Colby,
1983; Shapley & Kaplan,
1989). Psychophysical studies have shown that when stimulus displacements are small (a manipulation intended to activate the first-order motion system selectively), chromatic motion is readily masked by luminance noise (Yoshizawa, Mullen, & Baker,
2000) and survives high temporal-frequency exchange of the colors that define the moving border (Dobkins & Albright,
1993). These phenomena may arise from the small chromatic component of magnocellular input to MT neurons.