PubMed · 5953833
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D A Burkhardt. 1966. Brightness and the increment threshold.. https://doi.org/10.1364/josa.56.000979
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1. Low-frequency light-sensitive membrane current noise in isolated rod photoreceptors of the larval tiger salamander was recorded using suction electrodes, in the dark, and during light adaptation by backgrounds or by bleaching visual pigment. 2. In background light, noise variance increases and then decreases. For rods desensitized to similar levels by bleaching visual pigment, the noise variance either does not change (weak adaptation) or decreases (with stronger adaptation). 3. The power spectral density of the current noise in dark-adapted rods shows a component with half-power cut-off frequency at about 0.1 Hz, attributed to spontaneous single events and continuous noise from dark phosphodiesterase activity. A second component, with half-power cut-off frequency at about 1 Hz, may be due to slow components in the light-sensitive channel gating. 4. The power spectral density of the noise in background light is dominated by noise generated by the background. Background light adapts at least the first component of the noise seen in dark-adapted cells. For cells desensitized by bleaching, light adaptation of both components of the dark-adapted noise is observed. 5. The results confirm that the low-frequency noise in dark-adapted cells arises from the transduction mechanism of the rod, in that both components can be light adapted, and show that, for rods permanently desensitized by bleaching, the desensitization is not due to the presence of active visual pigment molecules similar to those produced by background light.
A large proportion of right-hemisphere stroke patients show hemispatial neglect-a neurological deficit of perception, attention, representation, and/or performing actions within their left-sided space, inducing many functional debilitating effects on everyday life, and responsible for poor functional recovery and ability to benefit from treatment. The frequent parietal locus of the lesion producing neglect reflects the impairment of coordinate transformation used by the nervous system to represent extrapersonal space. Given that adaptation to a visual distortion can provide an efficient way to stimulate neural structures responsible for the transformation of sensorimotor coordinates, the aim of our study was to investigate the effect of prism adaptation on various neglect symptoms, including the pathological shift of the subjective midline to the right. All patients exposed to the optical shift of the visual field to the right were improved on their manual body-midline demonstration and on classical neuropsychological tests. Unlike other physiological manipulations used to improve neglect, this improvement lasted for at least two hours after prism removal and thus could be useful in rehabilitation programmes. The positive effect found for both sensorimotor and more cognitive spatial functions suggests that they share or depend on a common level of space representation linked to multisensory integration.
When the Japanese quail is held in constant darkness, retinal responses (ERG b-waves) increase during the animal's subjective night and decrease during its subjective day. Rod photoreceptors dominate the b-wave responses (lambdamax = 506 nm) to all stimulus intensities at night but only to those intensities below the cone threshold during the day. Above the cone threshold, cones dominate b-wave responses (lambdamax, approximately 550-600 nm) during the day regardless of the state of retinal adaptation. Apparently a circadian oscillator enables cone signals to block rod signals during the day but not at night. The ERG b-wave reflects the activity of bipolar cells that are postsynaptic to rods and cones. The ERG a-wave reflects the activity of both rods and cones. The amplitude of the isolated a-wave (PIII) changes with time of day, as does that of the b-wave, but its spectral sensitivity does not. The PIII responses are maximal at approximately 520 nm both day and night and may reflect multiple receptor mechanisms. The shift in rod-cone dominance detected with the ERG b-wave resembles the Purkinje shift of human vision but, unlike the Purkinje shift, does not require a change in ambient light intensity. The shift occurs in constant darkness, with a period of approximately 24 hr indicative of a circadian rhythm in the functional organization of the retina.