This study sought to investigate the way in which the temporal envelope of amplitude-modulated (AM) flickering light is processed in the visual system. To this end, we measured the effects of adaptation on a low-frequency (2 Hz) envelope of AM flickering light with a high carrier frequency (16 Hz). The results showed that sensitivity to the envelope of the AM flickering light was reduced by ada...

We have investigated the global and local motion tuning properties of curvature coding mechanisms using two shape after-effects believed to be mediated by curvature-sensitive mechanisms: the shape-frequency after-effect, or SFAE, and the shape-amplitude after-effect, or SAAE. The SFAE and SAAE are the phenomena in which adaptation to a sine-wave-shaped contour causes a shift in respectively the...

Wilson and Humanski (1993) have recently reported evidence that adapting to low temporal frequency sinewave gratings yields little threshold elevation for briefly presented test stimuli. We postulated that brief stimuli may be detected by a transient channel which would be minimally affected by a low temporal frequency adapting pattern. We therefore measured the effect of adaptation on briefly ...

For rapidly translating targets, vernier thresholds correspond to millisecond asynchronies between targets. The 'temporal hypothesis' is that these thresholds reflect the limiting sensitivity of asynchrony detectors. Previous studies showed that temporal thresholds are generally higher than vernier thresholds, but failed to reject the 'temporal hypothesis' because stimuli had differing spatiote...