title: Orientation gradient detection exhibits variable coupling between first- and second-stage filtering mechanisms.
abstract: We investigated sensitivity to orientation modulation using visual stimuli with bandpass filtered noise carriers. We characterized the relationship between the spatial parameters of the modulator and the carrier using a 2-AFC detection task. The relationship between these two parameters is potentially informative of the underlying coupling between first- and second-stage filtering mechanisms, which, in turn, may bear on the interrelationship between striate and extrastriate cortical processing. Our previous experiments on analogous motion stimuli found an optimum sensitivity when the ratio of the carrier and modulator spatial frequency parameters (r) was approximately ten. The current results do not exhibit an optimum sensitivity at a given value of the ratio r. Previous experiments involving second-order modulation sensitivity show an inconsistent range of estimates of optimum sensitivity at values of r between 5 and 50. Our results, using a complementary approach, confirm these discrepancies, demonstrating that the coupling between carrier and modulator frequency parameters depends on a number of stimulus-specific factors, such as contrast sensitivity, stimulus eccentricity, and absolute values of the carrier and modulator spatial frequency parameters. We show that these observations are true for a stimulus limited in eccentricity and that this orientation-modulated stimulus does not exhibit scale invariance. Such processing can not be modeled by a generic filter-rectify-filter model.
authors.affiliation: McGill Vision Research, Department of Ophthalmology, McGill University, 687 Pine Avenue West Rm H4-14, Montreal QC H3A1A1, Canada. andrew.meso@mcgill.ca
authors.forename: Andrew Isaac
authors.initials: AI
authors.lastname: Meso
authors.forename: Robert F
authors.initials: RF
authors.lastname: Hess
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001931:Brain Mapping / Q000379:methods*; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D003201:Computers; D006801:Humans; D015233:Models, Statistical; D016011:Normal Distribution; D055095:Optics and Photonics; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011601:Psychophysics / Q000379:methods; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012160:Retina / Q000502:physiology*; D012684:Sensory Thresholds; D013028:Space Perception; D014785:Vision, Ocular / Q000502:physiology*