title: Old and new results about single-photon sensitivity in human vision.
abstract: It is sometimes said that 'our eyes can see single photons'. This article begins by finding a more precise version of that claim and reviewing evidence gathered for it up to around 1985 in two distinct realms, those of human psychophysics and single-cell physiology. Finding a single framework that accommodates both kinds of result is then a nontrivial challenge, and one that sets severe quantitative constraints on any model of dim-light visual processing. This article presents one such model and compares it to a recent experiment.
authors.affiliation: University of Pennsylvania, USA.
authors.forename: Philip C
authors.initials: PC
authors.lastname: Nelson
mesh_terms: D003198:Computer Simulation; D006801:Humans; D008027:Light; D008954:Models, Biological; D017785:Photons; D017948:Retinal Rod Photoreceptor Cells / Q000166:cytology / Q000378:metabolism*; D059010:Single-Cell Analysis; D013569:Synapses / Q000378:metabolism; D014785:Vision, Ocular