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Published August 31, 2001 | public
Journal Article

Afterimage of Perceptually Filled-in Surface

Abstract

An afterimage induced by prior adaptation to a visual stimulus is believed to be due to bleaching of photochemical pigments or neural adaptation in the retina. We report a type of afterimage that appears to require cortical adaptation. Fixating a neon-color spreading configuration led not only to negative afterimages corresponding to the inducers (local afterimages), but also to one corresponding to the perceptually filled-in surface during adaptation (global afterimage). These afterimages were mutually exclusive, undergoing monocular rivalry. The strength of the global afterimage correlated to a greater extent with perceptual filling-in during adaptation than with the strength of the local afterimages. Thus, global afterimages are not merely by-products of local afterimages, but involve adaptation at a cortical representation of surface.

Additional Information

© 2001 American Association for the Advancement of Science. Received 23 February 2001; accepted 15 June 2001. We thank L. Shams and B. Sheth for helpful comments, and S. Z. Smith for editorial assistance. Supported by California Institute of Technology and NTT Communication Science Laboratories.

Additional details

Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
March 5, 2024