TUNING AND BINDING IN COMPOUND ADAPTATION

Authors

  • David McGovern
  • Sarah Hancock
  • Jonathan W. Peirce

Abstract

The presence of neural mechanisms selective to plaid patterns has been shown usingcompound adaptation. We used this method to investigate the constraints the visualsystem employs when combining V1 outputs. Participants compared the contrast of aprobe in one visual hemi-field to a fixed reference probe in the other, followingadaptation to a plaid or its components respectively. Experiment 1 showed thatcompound adaptation was tightly tuned to the spatial frequency of the adaptorrelative to the test. Experiment 2 demonstrated that adaptation was strongest whenthe components shared the same spatial frequency and decreased markedly when theydiffered. Experiment 3 varied the temporal onset of the components comprising theplaid adaptor and found a non-linear decrease in adaptation; small temporalseparations of the components caused large decreases in adaptation. These findingsshow that small component differences may impact on the binding of thesecomponents into a single plaid texture.

Downloads

Issue

Section

Full Articles