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Contrast perception and electrophysiological correlates.

A Fiorentini, L Maffei

The Journal of Physiology

|May 1, 1973

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Human visual perception of grating contrast follows a linear relationship with the logarithm of stimulus contrast. This suggests a neural processing mechanism at the simple cell level in the visual cortex.

Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Visual Perception
Computational Neuroscience

Background:

Previous research indicates a linear relationship between visual evoked potentials and the logarithm of grating contrast in humans.
Similar linear relationships have been observed in cats for evoked potentials and simple cortical cell responses to gratings, but not in retinal or lateral geniculate neurons.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the relationship between objective stimulus contrast and perceived contrast in human visual perception.
To explore the neural basis of contrast perception, particularly the role of simple cortical cells.

Main Methods:

Psychophysical evaluation of grating contrast using a binocular matching technique in human subjects.
Stimulus contrast was varied over a range exceeding 10 times the detection threshold.

Related Experiment Videos

Main Results:

Apparent contrast was found to increase linearly with the logarithm of the stimulus contrast.
This linear relationship held true for contrasts significantly above the detection threshold.

Conclusions:

The observed linear relationship between apparent contrast and the logarithm of objective contrast suggests a neural computation occurring at the simple cell level.
This finding supports the hypothesis that simple cortical cells play a crucial role in processing and elaborating visual contrast information.