Suppression of Luminance Contrast Sensitivity by Weak Color Presentation

The results of psychophysical studies suggest that color in a visual scene affects luminance contrast perception. In our brain imaging studies we have found evidence of an effect of chromatic information on luminance information. The dependency of saturation on brain activity in the visual cortices was measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while the subjects were observing visual stimuli consisting of colored patches of various hues manipulated in saturation (Chroma value in the Munsell color system) on an achromatic background. The results indicate that the patches suppressed luminance driven brain activity. Furthermore, the suppression was stronger rather than weaker for patches with lower saturation colors, although suppression was absent when gray patches were presented instead of colored patches. We also measured brain activity while the subjects observed only the patches (on a uniformly black background) and confirmed that the colored patches alone did not give rise to differences in brain activity for different Chroma values. The chromatic information affects the luminance information in V1, since the effect was observed in early visual cortices (V2 and V3) and the ventral pathway (hV4), as well as in the dorsal pathway (V3A/B). In addition, we conducted a psychophysical experiment in which the ability to discriminate luminance contrast on a grating was measured. Discrimination was worse when weak (less saturated) colored patches were attached to the grating than when strong (saturated) colored patches or achromatic patches were attached. The results of both the fMRI and psychophysical experiments were consistent in that the effects of color were greater in the conditions with low saturation colors.