In this paper, a novel motion detector is proposed to perceive the weak changes in a image sequence. This is inspired by the mechanism of fixational eye movement and dynamics of vertebrate’s cortex. We realized respectively an artificial model of visual attention selection, called dual-probe adaptive model (DPAM), and an active tremor operation (ATO) approach. It is found that between them there exists a resonance phenomenon. The phenomenon is enhanced when the ATO and the DPAM are in-phase and is suppressed when they are anti-phase.?Based on this, we construct a novel motion detector combined by the ATO and the DPAM to resonate with the motion direction. This allows capturing moving edges even in the image sequences with lighting change and noisy background. Simulation and Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness.