Desaturating blue increases only chromatic brightness

Colour and brightness components of foveal visual evoked potentials in man

The different effects of colour and brightness on the transient visual evoked potentials to a foveal stimulus have been investigated in a psycho-physically controlled stimulus set-up, in which equally bright red, orange and green stimuli were substituted for a standard yellow stimulus. These colour-evoked responses were compared with the responses to additional brightness increments and decrements of each of the colour stimuli. An initial component of small amplitude, P55, was followed by a colour-dominated component, N87, and a luminance-dominated component, P120, with a maximum at the occipital electrode. Both N87 and P120 showed a decline in amplitude at the parietal electrode and P120 had a reversed polarity at FZ. These results indicate that the responses to equally bright green and red stimuli have closely similar wave forms, but that this changes rapidly with additional brightness differences. Comparison with the reports of subdural recording of colour-evoked potentials in the macaque striate cortex suggests that P55 corresponds with the primary excitation via geniculo-cortical fibres and that N87 and P120 represent later stages of cortical processing.

Short-wavelength cones contribute to achromatic sensitivity

Visual thresholds for flicker detection and light detection were measured for white and yellow flickering targets superposed on a white adapting field. The flicker frequency was set so that flicker detection thresholds always exceeded the light detection thresholds. The difference between the two types of thresholds was found to be smaller for yellow targets than for white targets. The most likely explanation of this result is that short-wavelength cones contribute to achromatic sensitivity at low temperal frequencies.

Brightness of equal-luminance lights

The brightness of lights defined by heterochromatic flicker photometry as being of equal luminance was determined by direct comparison with a white standard. Stimuli included mixtures of white and colored lights. Eight different colorimetric purities were tested for each of eleven primaries. Adaptation to a known white was maintained. Resulting brightnesses were expressed in terms of the ratio of the amount of light required for a brightness match to the amount required for a flicker photometric match (B:F). B:F ratios varied with the primary, being largest for red and blue primaries. The variation of B:F ratio with colorimetric purity differed depending on the primary, although for any given dominant wavelength the highest-purity stimulus always had the largest B:F ratio. The data qualitatively exclude a number of simple models of brightness generation.