Relationship between pupillary size, brightness, and photoreceptor responses for unrelated self‐luminous stimuli at low photopic light levels

Abstract

Research on the correlation between the initial pupillary light reflex, the perceptual brightness, and the excitations of the photoreceptors was performed for unrelated self-luminous 10 stimuli at low photopic light levels (5 to 80 cd/ m 2). All stimuli were optically characterized using a spectroradiometer. For determining the pupillary diameter, an Eye Tracker was used. The perceived brightness was evaluated with the magnitude estimation method. Test stimuli were presented alternating with a reference stimulus and the Michelson contrast of the pupillary diameter between test and reference conditions was calculated. Six observers (three female and three male) participated, with ages between 30 and 39 years (with an average of 34.5 years). It was found that the coefficient of determination between the pupillary response and the perceived stimulus brightness was higher than the corresponding value for luminance, allowing the suggestion that brightness has a greater effect on pupillary size than luminance. Nevertheless, this is not the complete story: highly saturated red and blue stimuli both induce a high brightness perception but the pupil contraction induced by the blue stimuli is much greater than for the red stimuli. Pupillary diameter was also studied as a function of the relative excitations of the five photoreceptors. The effect of rod and ipRGC excitations on pupillary size variation seems to be larger than that of the other photoreceptors. However, for the working conditions prevailing in this research, it could be expected that rods are not very active and that the ipRGC response might be the major driving mechanism.