Low-level features determine brightness in White's and Benary's illusions.

We masked White's and Benary's brightness illusions and simultaneous contrast with narrowband visual noise and measured detection thresholds and brightness. The noise was either isotropic or orientation filtered. A narrow spatial frequency tuning was found for detection and brightness for every stimulus.

Brightness processing in the visual cortex.

Single cell recordings have shown that some cells in the primary visual cortex (V1) signal surface brightness. However, fMRI experiments have found brightness related activation only in the higher cortical areas. In a psychophysical setup, we were able to dissociate the reduction of brightness caused by Gabor flankers, similar to the receptive fields in V1, from the edge induced brightness change.

Spatial frequency difference between textures interferes with brightness perception.

Abrupt changes in luminance trigger and restrict brightness filling-in. If brightness was actively filled-in and mediated by cells signaling both luminance borders and surface brightness, then brightness spreading could also get disrupted by changes in texture. We measured psychophysically the brightness of a uniform luminance disk, which was segmented into two parts by different textures.

Spatial frequency tuning of brightness polarity identification.

Recent studies have shown that cells in the primary visual cortex can, in addition to borders, also encode surface brightness. Whether the brightness is encoded by a large extraclassical receptive field or by a filling-in type mechanism activated by the luminance border is not known. These explanations imply different spatial frequency tunings for the underlying mechanism.

Contextual effects in fine spatial discriminations.

The context in which a pattern is viewed can greatly affect its apparent contrast, a phenomenon commonly attributed to pooled contrast gain control processes. A low-contrast surround may slightly enhance apparent contrast, whereas increasing the contrast of the surround leads to a monotonic decline in contrast appearance. We ask here how the presence of a patterned surround affects the ability to perform fine, suprathreshold orientation, contrast, and spatial frequency discriminations as a function of surround contrast and phase.

Separation of edge detection and brightness perception.

When a low spatial frequency noise mask is superimposed onto a luminance staircase, the perceived brightness pattern is dramatically altered although the edges remain visible. We measured contrast thresholds for the edges and for the illusory scalloping (Chevreul-illusion), as a function of noise center spatial frequency. The masking tuning functions overlapped, but peaked at different spatial frequencies and contrast levels.