Stabilized Structure from Motion without Disparity Induces Disparity Adaptation

3D structures can be perceived based on the patterns of 2D motion signals. With orthographic projection of a 3D stimulus onto a 2D plane, the kinetic information can give a vivid impression of depth, but the depth order is intrinsically ambiguous, resulting in bistable or even multistable interpretations. For example, an orthographic projection of dots on the surface of a rotating cylinder is perceived as a rotating cylinder with ambiguous direction of rotation. We show that the bistable rotation can be stabilized by adding information, not to the dots themselves, but to their spatial context. More interestingly, the stabilized bistable motion can generate consistent rotation aftereffects. The rotation aftereffect can only be observed when the adapting and test stimuli are presented at the same stereo depth and the same retinal location, and it is not due to attentional tracking. The observed rotation aftereffect is likely due to direction-contingent disparity adaptation, implying that stimuli with kinetic depth may have activated neurons sensitive to different disparities, even though the stimuli have zero relative disparity. Stereo depth and kinetic depth may be supported by a common neural mechanism at an early stage in the visual system.