Some effects of 1 week’s monocular exposure to long-wavelength stimuli

Abstract

Subjects wore a long-wavelength passband filter over one eye for 1 week. As a consequence, for that eye only, sensitivity to long-wavelength stimuli declined, unique yellow shifted to longer wavelengths, and scotopic stimuli acquired a strikingly bluish appearance. These results make it very likely that long-term exposure to a long-wavelength world can induce relatively prolonged (at least hours) postreceptoral adaptation.There have been many studies of the visual system's response to restricted environments or to conditions of deprivation. Typically, these studies have been conducted with infant animals. For example, kittens have been reared in environments lacking horizontal or vertical contours (Blakemore & Cooper, 1970;Hirsch & Spinelli, 1970) and infant monkeys have been rendered strabismic, thus precluding any functional binocular vision (Baker, Griff, & von Noorden, 1974;Wiesel & Hubel, 1974). The general finding is that lack of experience with some relevant features in the visual environment leads to a greatly reduced response to these stimuli, both physiologically and behaviorally, when they are presented to the animal later in its life (Barlow, 1975; Kuffler & Nichols, 1976, chap. 19). This is true for human vision under naturally occurring conditions of sensory deprivation as well (Awaya, Miyake, Imaizumi, Shiose, Kanda, & Komuro, 1973;von Noorden & Maumenee, 1968). Recently, however, McCourt and Jacobs (1980), working with California ground squirrels, indicated that the effects of exposure to a chromatically restrictive environment may be reversible.When adults are similarly placed in such restrictive environments, their visual systems, rather than losing sensitivity to the missing stimuli, may become somewhat desensitized to the stimuli predominating in that environment and may perhaps even become somewhat supersensitized to the stimuli missing in that environment, that is, to the stimuli of which they have been deprived (DeValois, 1977). The fully developed visual system has the ability to adapt to its ambient environment.Several investigators have studied the effects, uponWe wish to express our thanks to C. Stromeyer and K. White for suggestions and helpful discussion, to Colonel D. Glick of Fort Rucker, Alabama, for lending us the anomaloscope, and to D. Hood and M. Powers for comments after a talk delivered at the Optical Society of America annual meeting. This research was supported in part by a National Institutes of Health Training Grant EY07046 and Research Grant EY03674 to Jay M. Enoch. Requests for reprints should be directed to the first author. both human adults (Hill & Stevenson, 1976;Kohler, 1962;McCollough, 1965) and adult monkeys (LeGros Clark, 1942), of long-term exposure to restrictive chromatic environments, but, to our knowledge, none have quantitatively measured its effects upon sensitivity of various mechanisms of human color vision. Changes in color appearance in photopic environments have been noted (Hill & Stevenson, 1976;Kohler, 1962).The present study investigated the ef...

Effects on colour discrimination during long term exposure to high altitudes on Mt Everest

“…Hypoxia decreases the maximum response rate of all cone pathways equally; however, as the number of S cones is limited, their absolute responses might become undetectable at earlier stages compared with the more redundant L or M cones 24. While hypoxia-induced cone dysfunction is likely to be the cause for decreased colour vision, other factors may play a role: the use of sunglasses required to prevent high-altitude UV light damage may result in a long-lasting chromatic adaptation to middle- and long-wavelength stimuli, which in turn may attenuate the potential effects on deutan and protan at high altitude 25 26. Indeed, it would be important to rigorously investigate the existence and mechanism(s) of adaptation of chromatic threshold due to the prolonged stay at high altitude in larger studies.…”

Visual Adaptation

“…These have revealed longer-term aftereffects that may emerge only after sustained periods of adaptation. For example, long-term exposure to a colored bias induces aftereffects that are much more persistent than short-term chromatic adaptation (Neitz et al, 2002, Belmore and Shevell, 2010, Eisner and Enoch, 1982), and color vision in cataract patients requires months to readapt after surgery (Delahunt et al, 2004). Similarly, while brief adaptation to blur or contrast is sufficient to induce a strong perceptual aftereffect, hours of exposure are required to see increases in acuity and sensitivity (Mon-Williams et al, 1998, Kwon et al, 2009, Zhang et al, 2009).…”

Adaptation and visual coding

“…A recent study found that the aftereffects show two independent time courses, a brief decay over seconds similar to the dynamics measured for contrast adaptation and an essentially static bias that requires exposure to a new pattern to reset (Vul, Krizay, & MacLeod, 2008). Long-term color aftereffects can also be induced when observers are exposed for a few hours a day to color-biased environments created by changing the spectrum of the room lighting, wearing tinted contacts, or viewing colored edges on a display (Belmore & Shevell, 2008, 2010; Eisner & Enoch, 1982; Neitz, Carroll, Yamauchi, Neitz, & Williams, 2002). Exposure to a red context shifts the wavelength that appears unique yellow, and these aftereffects can persist for days.…”