PSYC310 Chapter Notes - Chapter 3: Lateral Geniculate Nucleus, Visual Cortex, Visual Acuity
3 Mar 2017
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Chapter 3: spatial vision: from spots to stripes. Contrast: the difference in illumination between an object and the background, or between lighter and darker parts of the same object. Acuity: the smallest spatial detail that can be resolved at 100% contrast. Vision scientists prefer to talk about the smallest visual angle of a cycle of the grating that we can perceive. Cycle: for a grating, a pair consisting of one dark and one bright bar. Good vision can resolve gratings when once cycle subtends an angle of approximately 1 minute of arc. The finest high-quality detail that can be resolved determined by the spacing of photoreceptors in the retina. If the entire cycle falls on a single cone, we will see nothing but a gray field. Cones in the fovea fit nicely with the observed acuity limit of 1 minute of arc.
