Hyperacuity for luminance phase angle in the human visual system.

Abstract

A moving target with identical trajectories in the two eyes appeared shifted in depth if flickered with a phase difference between the eyes. The direction of the depth shift was the same as if the phase-lagging eye had been seeing the target with a spatial advance in the direction of target motion. Maximum acuity for this effect was in the region of 7 deg of phase angle, which may be expressed as a spatial difference between corresponding luminance points of about 13 sec arc. Acuity was approximately constant over a wide range of modulation periods from 50 to 150 msec when expressed in terms of phase angle, but fell off rapidly at higher and at lower frequencies. The results cannot be explained simply by either conventional disparity theory or by spatio-temporal interpolation, but suggest that inter-ocular correspondence is influenced by dynamic luminance information.