Neural adaptation to blur
Michael A. Webster, Susana Marcos · 2017
A central premise of vision science is that the visual system is designed to efficiently encode and represent the properties of the visual environment ( Simoncelli and Olshausen 2001 ). This optimization poses daunting challenges, in part because sensitivity is limited and the information available is often corrupted or incomplete. But it is also challenging because the environment and the observer are constantly changing, and thus the optimal coding schemes themselves must change. In this chapter, we examine how the visual system adapts to these changes, focusing on how vision adapts to image blur. Exposure to blur—introduced in the stimulus, by the optics of the eye, or by optical correction or ocular treatment—leads to relatively rapid and reversible changes in visual responses to blur. These neural adjustments affect both sensitivity (e.g., changing visual acuity) and perception (e.g., changing how blurry the world appears). We first review the general properties and functions of adaptation and then discuss how adaptation alters our perception of blur and how and where in the visual system these adjustments occur.