Perceptual asynchrony: motion leads color

It is widely accepted that motion and colour are processed in separate brain areas of primates. Numerous studies on monkeys suggest that neural mechanisms responsible for motion processing respond faster than those for colour. Recent studies on humans, however, provide contradictory evidence. Is this discrepancy due to a gap between species (animal vs. human), or between measures (neurophysiological vs. behavioral)? To help resolve this issue, event-related potentials are acquired as human participants viewed motion and colour stimuli. Results indicated that the physiological response evoked by motion arose earlier than that by colour, which is consistent with previous findings in animals. This temporal precedence of motion signal processing over colour was corroborated in a parallel behavioral experiment.