Post-retinal processing of background luminance

It is generally thought that mean luminance and low spatial frequency information in a visual image are sharply attenuated at the retina, due to processes of light adaptation and the spatial filtering effects of lateral inhibition. Our results from interocular luminance masking suggest, however, that cortical masking effects play a primary role in the attenuation of low frequency sensitivity. Results also revealed that interocular luminance masking saturates and that semisaturation occurs where left and right eye luminances are equal, implying that the test luminance limits the effectiveness of the mask through interocular gating.