Color from invisible patterns.
Human pattern resolution is limited by optical blurring as well as neural filtering by a cascade of retinal and cortical sites with progressively lower resolution limits. Curiously, pattern structure can influence perceived color: a high-contrast, monochromatic (single wavelength) pattern appears desaturated (closer to white) relative to a uniform field of the same wavelength. Here we show that this desaturation is evident even when the pattern's frequency is too high for conscious perception, implicating a nonlinear process--namely light adaptation--at the level of single cone photoreceptors. We propose a neural mechanism in which fast, involuntary eye movements serve to shift control over perception between two competing cone populations, each operating at different levels of adaptation.
Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego 9500 Gilman Drive, MC 0109, La Jolla, California 92037, USA. sherif@psy.ucsd.edu
Sherif
S
Shady
Donald I A
DI
MacLeod
D003118:Color Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D015350:Contrast Sensitivity / Q000502:physiology*; D005133:Eye Movements / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D017949:Retinal Cone Photoreceptor Cells / Q000502:physiology; D013997:Time Factors