title: Gradient representations and the perception of luminosity.
abstract: The neuronal mechanisms that serve to distinguish between light emitting and light reflecting objects are largely unknown. It has been suggested that luminosity perception implements a separate pathway in the visual system, such that luminosity constitutes an independent perceptual feature. Recently, a psychophysical study was conducted to address the question whether luminosity has a feature status or not. However, the results of this study lend support to the hypothesis that luminance gradients are instead a perceptual feature. Here, I show how the perception of luminosity can emerge from a previously proposed neuronal architecture for generating representations of luminance gradients.
authors.affiliation: Basic Psychology Department, Faculty for Psychology, University of Barcelona, Passeig de la Vall d'Hebron 171, E-08035 Barcelona, Spain. mats@cvc.uab.es
authors.forename: Matthias S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Keil
mesh_terms: D019466:Glare; D006801:Humans; D008029:Lighting; D008959:Models, Neurological; D008960:Models, Psychological; D011601:Psychophysics; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*