Heritability in human motion perception - providing psychophysical methods for genetic analysis

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While there have been recent attempts to understand the genetics of cognitive functions, such as intelligence, memory and personality, little attention has been paid to the genetics of sensory brain functions. Identifying the polymorphisms affecting specific low-level perceptual functions may shed light on the processes underlying fundamental cognitive processes. I propose to develop an array of psychophysical paradigms for the investigation of motion perception which show significant variation among individuals and indications of heritability. This array may later be used to investigate the genetic basis of interindividual differences in the perception of motion. Four paradigms which are subject to substantial individual variation will be tested: (i) the preferred direction of ambiguous motion, (ii) the ability to detect motion direction, (iii) velocity discrimination, and (iv) perception of composed plaids. In a first step, the suggested paradigms will be psychophysically tested for reliable production of individual variation and optimised for large sample psychophysical testing. Finally, a panel of sibling pairs will be tested using these paradigms to establish heritability, and to identify candidate motion mechanisms for genetic analysis.