Newtonian Predictions Are Integrated With Sensory Information in 3D Motion Perception.

Because the motions of everyday objects obey Newtonian mechanics, perhaps these laws or approximations thereof are internalized by the brain to facilitate motion perception. Shepard's seminal investigations of this hypothesis demonstrated that the visual system fills in missing information in a manner consistent with kinematic constraints. Here, we show that perception relies on internalized regularities not only when filling in missing information but also when available motion information is inconsistent with the expected outcome of a physical event. When healthy adult participants (