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Scene segmentation is best put as breaking down the scene you are looking at to see the different parts of it. The importance motion has in scene segmentation includes motion parallax as a depth cue, motion for breaking camouflage, and motion for grabbing attention. Motion helps us pick out things in a scene that otherwise would blend in if it were still; similarly, someone sitting across a room full of people would probably blend in with everyone else in the room, but if they were the only ones waving at you, they would stand out.

The aperture problem refers to when the direction of motion of straight lines is ambiguous because you can’t see the ends or corners; in other words if something (the aperture) is in the way of what we are viewing, it can distort the movement we are seeing by making it appear to be stagnant.

Visual area MT responds to local motion which is closest to us. MST likes optic flow, which is motion that’s coordinated across the entire scene and has a heading, or a point of convergence much like a car driving towards the horizon and looking increasingly smaller as it goes. Check out this cool site with moving examples of optic flow!