Abstract
The defining property of retinal X-like cells and cortical simple cells is that they exhibit a null phaseat which grating stimuli produce little or no response [1–5]. It follows that for such “linear summation”cells a masking stimulus at the null phase should have no effect on detection of a stimulus at the optimum phase (90 degrees from the null phase). When the stimuli are in phase, however, we expect the masking stimulus to reduce sensitivity according to the power law of the contrast discrimination function [6]. Thus, if the contrast transducer function were determined exclusively by either retinal X-like cells or cortical simple cells, the degree of masking should be markedly affected by the phase of the background relative to the test.
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Lawton, T.B. (1987). The Role of X and Simple Cells in the Contrast Transducer Function of Low Vision and Normal Observers. In: Woo, G.C. (eds) Low Vision. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-4780-7_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-4780-7_9
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