Abstract
It is assumed that the activity of a visual channel may be represented as V(t)=g(t)+ξ(t), where g(t) is the deterministic response of the channel due to the presentation of a stimulus and ξ(t) is the trajectory of a wide-sense stationary Gauss process. The stimulus is detected if the event V(t)>S for at least one tε[0, T] occurs. Two approximations for the probability of this event are proposed, and it is demonstrated how they may be employed to estimate (i) the value of the second spectral moment λ 2 of the noise process ξ t , where λ 2 reflects the speed of the fluctuations of the trajectories λ t , and (ii) the value of the internal threshold S. The commonly made assumption of peak — detection is shown to serve as a very good first approximation in particular if the channel is of transient type or — in case of detection by a channel of sustained type — if the stimulus durations are not too long.
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Mortensen, U., Suhl, U. An evaluation of sensory noise in the human visual system. Biol. Cybern. 66, 37–47 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00196451
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00196451