NEW YORK, March 25 (UPI) -- A U.S.-led study has determined the vision system the brain uses to process color is separate from that used to detect motion.
Researchers at New York University and Germany's University of Wurzburg said their findings run counter to previous studies that suggested motion detection and color contrast might work in tandem.
The scientists said they used the fruit fly Drosophila for the study since fruit flies' development is well-understood. Specifically, the researchers monitored optomotor response to moving color stimuli in both normal and mutant flies, with some of the mutant flies lacking the photoreceptors necessary for motion detection and others without the photoreceptors needed to process color.
The results showed flies lacking the photoreceptors for detecting color showed the same ability to detect motion as normal flies. The researchers concluded the color channel doesn't contribute to motion detection.
The study, which included Claude Desplan of New York University, Reinhard Wolf and Martin Heisenberg of the University of Wurzburg and Satoko Yamaguchi who holds appointments at both institutions, appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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