Brightness is a fundamental quality of human vision. The mission of the National Eye Institute, and that of the SAVP program in particular, include understanding normal visual processing. Investigation of the neural mechanisms underlying brightness perception will contribute to our understanding of visual processing in general. This knowledge lays the groundwork for therapeutic interventions for disordered vision. A central problem in the study of brightness perception is understanding how the visual system separates the reflectances of objects from their illumination. These two variables are confounded since their product determines the amount of light reaching the eye from a particular surface. When the visual system is successful at separating reflectance and illumination it is said to be displaying brightness (or lightness) constancy, and perception is veridical. Perceptual errors (i.e., constancy failures) are potentially informative regarding the mechanisms underlying brightness perception, and the study of brightness illusions has historically been and continues to be a productive topic of research. While a large number of intriguing brightness illusions have been introduced, a survey of the literature reveals that the number of proposed explanations for these illusions is itself cumbersome. In addition, although phenomenal brightness demonstrations are often used to support various theories or proposed mechanisms of brightness coding, very few quantitative data are actually available to support these claims. The goal of the authors' recent research efforts, as well as the currently proposed research, is to remedy these deficiencies by investigating and modeling the spatial and temporal interactions between different areas of the visual field through the quantitative study of brightness illusions. The authors plan to continue to collect quantitative psychophysical data on brightness effects that will enlarge the quantitative database and critically test competing theories of brightness perception. In addition, these data will inform the continued development of a mechanistic model of brightness perception, the ODOG model of Blakeslee & McCourt (1999). This relatively low-level multiscale spatial filtering model has been extremely successful in simplifying our understanding of the mechanisms underlying brightness perception and in accounting for a large number of brightness effects that have previously been ascribed to a variety of different mechanisms.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Eye Institute (NEI)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01EY014015-04
Application #
7025617
Study Section
Visual Sciences B Study Section (VISB)
Program Officer
Oberdorfer, Michael
Project Start
2003-03-01
Project End
2008-02-28
Budget Start
2006-03-01
Budget End
2008-02-28
Support Year
4
Fiscal Year
2006
Total Cost
$171,132
Indirect Cost
Name
North Dakota State University
Department
Psychology
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
803882299
City
Fargo
State
ND
Country
United States
Zip Code
58108
Blakeslee, Barbara; Cope, Davis; McCourt, Mark E (2016) The Oriented Difference of Gaussians (ODOG) model of brightness perception: Overview and executable Mathematica notebooks. Behav Res Methods 48:306-12
Blakeslee, Barbara; McCourt, Mark E (2013) Brightness induction magnitude declines with increasing distance from the inducing field edge. Vision Res 78:39-45
Blakeslee, Barbara; McCourt, Mark E (2012) When is spatial filtering enough? Investigation of brightness and lightness perception in stimuli containing a visible illumination component. Vision Res 60:40-50
Blakeslee, Barbara; McCourt, Mark E (2011) Spatiotemporal analysis of brightness induction. Vision Res 51:1872-9
Cope, Davis; Blakeslee, Barbara; McCourt, Mark E (2009) Simple cell response properties imply receptive field structure: balanced Gabor and/or bandlimited field functions. J Opt Soc Am A Opt Image Sci Vis 26:2067-92
Blakeslee, Barbara; Reetz, Daniel; McCourt, Mark E (2009) Spatial filtering versus anchoring accounts of brightness/lightness perception in staircase and simultaneous brightness/lightness contrast stimuli. J Vis 9:22.1-17
Blakeslee, Barbara; Reetz, Daniel; McCourt, Mark E (2008) Coming to terms with lightness and brightness: effects of stimulus configuration and instructions on brightness and lightness judgments. J Vis 8:3.1-14
Blakeslee, Barbara; McCourt, Mark E (2008) Nearly instantaneous brightness induction. J Vis 8:15.1-8
Blakeslee, Barbara; McCourt, Mark E (2005) A multiscale filtering explanation of gradient induction and remote brightness induction effects: a reply to Logvinenko (2003). Perception 34:793-802
McCourt, Mark E (2005) Comparing the spatial-frequency response of first-order and second-order lateral visual interactions: grating induction and contrast-contrast. Perception 34:501-10

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