Volume 9, Number 5, Article 2, Pages 1-15 doi:10.1167/9.5.2 http://journalofvision.org/9/5/2/ ISSN 1534-7362
Cross-orientation masking is speed invariant between ocular pathways but speed dependent within them
Tim S. Meese
School of Life and Health Sciences, Aston University, Birmingham, UK
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Daniel H. Baker
School of Life and Health Sciences, Aston University, Birmingham, UK
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Abstract

In human (D. H. Baker, T. S. Meese, & R. J. Summers, 2007b) and in cat (B. Li, M. R. Peterson, J. K. Thompson, T. Duong, & R. D. Freeman, 2005; F. Sengpiel & V. Vorobyov, 2005) there are at least two routes to cross-orientation suppression (XOS): a broadband, non-adaptable, monocular (within-eye) pathway and a more narrowband, adaptable interocular (between the eyes) pathway. We further characterized these two routes psychophysically by measuring the weight of suppression across spatio-temporal frequency for cross-oriented pairs of superimposed flickering Gabor patches. Masking functions were normalized to unmasked detection thresholds and fitted by a two-stage model of contrast gain control (T. S. Meese, M. A. Georgeson, & D. H. Baker, 2006) that was developed to accommodate XOS. The weight of monocular suppression was a power function of the scalar quantity ‘speed’ (temporal-frequency/spatial-frequency). This weight can be expressed as the ratio of non-oriented magno- and parvo-like mechanisms, permitting a fast-acting, early locus, as befits the urgency for action associated with high retinal speeds. In contrast, dichoptic-masking functions superimposed. Overall, this (i) provides further evidence for dissociation between the two forms of XOS in humans, and (ii) indicates that the monocular and interocular varieties of XOS are space/time scale-dependent and scale-invariant, respectively. This suggests an image-processing role for interocular XOS that is tailored to natural image statistics—very different from that of the scale-dependent (speed-dependent) monocular variety.

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History
Received August 12, 2008; published May 4, 2009
Citation
Meese, T. S., & Baker, D. H. (2009). Cross-orientation masking is speed invariant between ocular pathways but speed dependent within them. Journal of Vision, 9(5):2, 1-15, http://journalofvision.org/9/5/2/, doi:10.1167/9.5.2.
Keywords
human vision, psychophysics, contrast gain control, interocular masking, binocular rivalry
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