Disparity tuning in mechanisms of human stereopsis

The change in sensitivity across some stimulus dimension which follows adaptation to a particular stimulus can reveal a great deal about the tuning characteristics of underlying sensory/perceptual mechanisms. In this study, a psychophysical adaptation paradigm was employed to characterize the disparity tuning of perceptual mechanisms involved in stereopsis. The stimulus was a dynamic random-dot stereogram (DRDS) portraying a surface which varied in interocular correlation (IOC) and retinal disparity. Adaptation to a fully correlated DRDS surface produced an elevation in IOC threshold over a relatively narrow range of disparities, with maximum effect at the disparity of the adapting stimulus. The width of these disparity tuning functions varied from 5 arc min for adaptation at the horopter to 20 arc min for adaptation at 20 arc min disparity. Frequently, IOC sensitivity was enhanced for disparities on either side of the adapted disparity, suggesting that an opponent center-surround organization operates at an early level of disparity processing. A model of underlying channel structure consistent with these data is presented.