Abstract
A NUMBER of well-known visual phenomena, including Mach Bands1 and the related illusion2 shown in Fig. 1 are inter-pretable as evidence of lateral interaction between adjacent neural channels sensitive to retinal luminance. Inhibitory interaction would lead to disproportionate weight being given to sharp discontinuities in luminance. This can be taken to explain why the middle panel in Fig. 1 (when viewed from the right distance) is seen as brighter overall than its neighbours, though objectively all three have the same luminance at their centres. The limited retinal range of the interactive process responsible is shown by the gradual disappearance of the illusion as the viewing distance is increased.
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MACKAY, D. Lateral Interaction between Neural Channels sensitive to Texture Density?. Nature 245, 159–161 (1973). https://doi.org/10.1038/245159a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/245159a0
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