title: BOLD fMRI and psychophysical measurements of contrast response to broadband images.
abstract: We have measured the relationship between image contrast, perceived contrast, and BOLD fMRI activity in human early visual areas, for natural, whitened, pink noise, and white noise images. As root-mean-square contrast increases, BOLD response to natural images is stronger and saturates more rapidly than response to the whitened images. Perceived contrast and BOLD fMRI responses are higher for pink noise than for white noise patterns, by the same ratio as between natural and whitened images. Spatial phase structure has no measurable effect on perceived contrast or BOLD fMRI response. The fMRI and perceived contrast response results can be described by models of spatial frequency response in V1, that match the contrast sensitivity function at low contrasts, and have more uniform spatial frequency response at high contrasts.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuroscience, University of Minnesota, Center for Magnetic Resonance Research, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA. cheryl@cmrr.umn.edu
authors.forename: Cheryl A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Olman
authors.forename: Kamil
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Ugurbil
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Schrater
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Kersten
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003196:Computer Graphics; D015350:Contrast Sensitivity / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D020407:Internet; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008960:Models, Psychological; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011601:Psychophysics; D012684:Sensory Thresholds; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000502:physiology*