title: An electronic apparatus to measure the retinal-neural fading phenomena.
abstract: Fading and regeneration of visual stimuli is a phenomenon which occurs under the condition of redundant visual stimulation in the human eye. By totally encompassing a subject's visual field with large sheets of colored cardboard, which provided an undifferentiated ground, it was found that the color spontaneously disappeared and reappeared. This evidence suggested that the cycle is a fundamental aspect of the visual process. The Retinal-Neural Fading Phenomena Device was developed using light-emitting diodes (LED) as the stimulus source. This allowed the quantitative measurement of the rate of fade and degree of satiation the eye undergoes under a redundant presentation equivalent to stabilized images. The rate and degree of satiation to redundant stimulation appears to correlate highly with a subject's reading efficiency. The data suggested that rapid and deep satiation was the favored outcome if one is to be free from reading or perceptual disorders. This leads to the speculation that rapid fade of afterimages of previously read symbols is required to prepare the visual system for new material. Conversely, the inability to suppress afterimages may be a physiological factor in the "dyslexic syndrome."
mesh_terms: D000360:Afterimage / Q000502:physiology; D004410:Dyslexia / Q000503:physiopathology; D004581:Electronics / Q000295:instrumentation*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011932:Reading; D012160:Retina / Q000502:physiology* / Q000503:physiopathology; D014785:Vision, Ocular / Q000502:physiology*