Can common functional gene variants affect visual discrimination in metacontrast masking?

ABSTRACT: Mechanisms of visual perception should be robustly fast and provide veridical information about environmental objects in order to facilitate survival and successful coping. Because species-specific brain mechanisms for fast vision must have evolved under heavy pressure for efficiency, it has been held that different human individuals see the physical world in the same way and produce psychophysical functions of visual discrimination that are qualitatively the same. For many years, this assumption has been implicitly accepted in vision research studying extremely fast, basic visual processes, including studies of visual masking. However, in recent studies of metacontrast masking surprisingly robust individual differences in the qualitative aspects of subjects' performance have been found. A

SUBMITTER: Maksimov M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3554658 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature