Flicker and Flicker Interactions in Human Vision

人类的色觉依赖于眼睛视网膜中一种叫做视锥细胞的特殊受体细胞。一种视锥细胞，被称为短波长视锥细胞或s视锥细胞，对光谱中蓝色区域的光最敏感；其他是中波或m-锥细胞，长波或l -锥细胞，对红色最敏感。视锥细胞参与了导致视觉感知的两个信息概念通道。光刺激的强度在亮度通道中表示，光的颜色在色度通道中表示。整理出不同种类的受体对这些不同通道的相对贡献一直是一个重要的问题。这个项目将检查色度和亮度贡献的时间属性。人类受试者将彩色测试光的闪烁设置为刚好处于可见闪烁的阈值。闪烁的频率或强度，或背景，或倾向于掩盖或增强第一个闪烁的第二个刺激，都可以变化。利用强光，这个实验室已经发现S锥细胞可以促进亮度通道。对光强度的快速反应显然使用轻快的路径到亮度通道，而对颜色的较慢反应使用缓慢的路径到颜色通道。当前的项目将评估在更正常的光照水平下两种通路的相对突出和时间特性，并试图确定s锥对亮度的贡献在这些较低的光照水平下是否重要。这项工作使用了创新的技术和方法来传递和分析脉冲刺激，这项工作的结果将对色觉理论、色光的商业工程测量以及对人类视觉的一般理解非常重要。

Color vision in humans depends on particular receptor cells called cones in the retina of the eye. One population of cones, known as the short-wavelength cones or S-cones is most sensitive to light in the blue region of the spectrum; others are the medium-wavelength or M-cones, and long-wavelength or L-cones, most sensitive to red. Cones contribute to two conceptual channels of information leading to visual perception. Intensity of light stimuli is signalled in the luminance channel, and color of light is signalled in the chromatic channel. Sorting out the relative contributions of the different kinds of receptors to these different channels has been an important problem. This project will examine the temporal properties of the chromatic and luminance contributions. A human subject will set flicker of a colored test light to be at just the threshold of visible flickering. The frequency or the intensity of the flicker, or the background, or a second stimulus that tends to mask or augment the flicker of the first, can all be varied. Using very intense lights, this lab already discovered that S- cones can contribute to the luminance channel. Fast responses to light intensity apparently use a brisk pathway to a luminance channel, while slower responses to color use a sluggish pathway to a chromatic channel. The current project will asses the relative prominence and the temporal properties of the two pathways at more normal light levels, and try to determine if the S-cone contribution to luminance is important at these lower levels. This work uses innovative techniques and methodology for delivering and analyzing pulsing stimuli, and results from this work will be very important to theories of color vision, to commercial engineering measurements of colored lights, and to understanding human vision in general.