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Functional Relation between Stimulus Intensity and Photically Evoked Cerebral Responses in Man

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Abstract

IT has been demonstrated in several laboratories1–5 that estimates of subjective brightness increase in approximate proportion to the cube root of stimulus intensity under conditions of dark adaptation for stimuli of varied area, duration and spectral composition. Liang and Pieron6 present evidence that the latency of visual perception decreases with increasing luminance as the inverse of this power function. Thus, ψb = c/(t − t0) = k(L − L0)0.33, where ψb = subjective brightness judged by magnitude estimation; t = perceptual latency; t0 = limit of perceptual latency at maximum luminance; L = luminance; L0 = threshold luminance; c and k = constants.

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Author notes

  1. HERBERT G. VAUGHAN JUN.

    Present address: Department of Neurology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, 1300 Morris Park Avenue, Bronx, N.Y.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, 39, Massachusetts

    HERBERT G. VAUGHAN JUN. & RICHARD C. HULL

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  1. HERBERT G. VAUGHAN JUN.
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  2. RICHARD C. HULL
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VAUGHAN, H., HULL, R. Functional Relation between Stimulus Intensity and Photically Evoked Cerebral Responses in Man. Nature 206, 720–722 (1965). https://doi.org/10.1038/206720a0

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