Resolution acuity across the visual field for mesopic and scotopic illumination.

We investigated the classical question of why visual acuity decreases with decreasing retinal illuminance by holding retinal eccentricity fixed while illumination varied. Our results indicate that acuity is largely independent of illuminance at any given retinal location, which suggests that under classical free-viewing conditions acuity improves as illumination increases from rod threshold to rod saturation because the retinal location of the stimulus is permitted to migrate from a peripheral location of maximum sensitivity but poor acuity to the foveal location of maximum acuity but poor sensitivity. Comparison with anatomical sampling density of retinal neurons suggests that mesopic acuity at all eccentricities and scotopic acuity for eccentricities beyond about 20° is limited by the spacing of midget ganglion cells.

Neural bandwidth of veridical perception across the visual field.

Neural undersampling of the retinal image limits the range of spatial frequencies that can be represented veridically by the array of retinal ganglion cells conveying visual information from eye to brain. Our goal was to demarcate the neural bandwidth and local anisotropy of veridical perception, unencumbered by optical imperfections of the eye, and to test competing hypotheses that might account for the results. Using monochromatic interference fringes to stimulate the retina with high-contrast sinusoidal gratings, we measured sampling-limited visual resolution along eight meridians from 0° to 50° of eccentricity.