Adaptation mechanisms in spatial vision I: Bleaches and backgrounds.
Lance W. Hahn and Wilson S. Geisler

To examine how the mechanisms of bleaching and background adaptation affect spatial pattern vision, contrast detection thresholds were measured in the fovea for sinusoidal (increment-Gabor) targets, during long-term dark adaptation following full bleaches, and against steady adapting backgrounds of various intensities. The dark-adaptation curves were found to be invariant in shape over the range of spatial frequencies tested (1-15 cpd); in other words, the amplitude sensitivity functions were invariant during dark adaptation. These results support the hypothesis that bleaching adaptation is local and multiplicative. On the other hand, the background-adaptation curves measured for different spatial frequencies were found to converge as background intensity increased; the amplitude sensitivity functions became flatter. These results reject the equivalent-background hypothesis. This research was supported by NIH grant EY02688 and AFOSR grant F49620-93-1-0307 to WSG.