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Updated: May 25, 2026

Visualizing Visual Adaptation
Published on: April 24, 2017
Contrast adaptation reveals increased organizational complexity of chromatic processing in the visual evoked
Chad S Duncan1, Eric J Roth, Yoko Mizokami
1Department of Psychology, University of Nevada, Reno 0296, 1664 N. Virginia Street, Reno, Nevada 89557, USA. cduncan@unr.edu
Abstract:
Results from psychophysics and single-unit recordings suggest that color vision comprises multiple stages of processing. Postreceptoral channels appear to consist of both a stage of broadly tuned opponent channels that compare cone signals and a subsequent stage, which includes cells tuned to many different directions in color space. The chromatic visual evoked potential (crVEP) has demonstrated chromatic processing selective for cardinal axes of color space. However, crVEP evidence for higher-order color mechanisms is lacking. The present study aimed to assess the contribution of lower- and higher-order color mechanisms to the crVEP by using chromatic contrast adaptation. The results reveal the presence of mechanisms tuned to intermediate directions in color space in addition to those tuned to the fundamental cardinal axes.
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