The visual recognition of action can be obtained from the change of body posture over time. Even for point-light stimuli in which the body posture is conveyed by only a few light points, biological motion can be perceived from posture sequence analysis. We present and analyze a formal model of how action recognition may be computed and represented in the brain. This model assumes that motion energy detectors similar to those well-established for the luminance-based motion of objects in space are applied to a cortical representation of body posture. Similar to the spatio-temporal receptive fields of regular motion detectors, these body motion detectors attain receptive fields in a posture-time space. We describe the properties of these receptive fields and compare them with properties of body-sensitive neurons found in the superior temporal sulcus of macaque monkeys. We consider tuning properties for 3D views of static and moving bodies. Our simulations show that key properties of action representation in the STS can directly be explained from the properties of natural action stimuli. Our model also suggests an explanation for the phenomenon of implied motion, the perceptual appearance, and neural activation of motion from static images.

Recent models have proposed a two-stage process of biological motion recognition. First, template or snapshot neurons estimate the body form. Then, motion is estimated from body form change. This predicts separate aftereffects for body form and body motion. We tested this prediction. Observers viewing leftward-or rightward-facing point-light walkers that walked forward or backward subsequently experienced oppositely directed aftereffects in stimuli ambiguous in the facing or the walking direction. These aftereffects did not originate from adaptation to the motion of the individual light points, because they occurred for limitedlifetime stimuli that restrict local motion. They also occurred when the adaptor displayed a random sequence of body postures that did not induce the walking motion percept. We thus conclude that biological motion gives rise to separate form and motion aftereffects and that body form representations are involved in biological motion perception.

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