The Verriest Lecture: color lessons from space, time and motion

Adjusting to a sudden “aging” of the lens

Color perception is known to remain largely stable across the lifespan despite the pronounced changes in sensitivity from factors such as the progressive brunescence of the lens. However, the mechanisms and timescales controlling these compensatory adjustments are still poorly understood. In a series of experiments, we tracked adaptation in observers after introducing a sudden change in lens density by having observers wear glasses with yellow filters that approximated the average spectral transmittance of a 70-year-old lens. Individuals were young adults and wore the glasses for 5 days for 8 h per day while engaged in their normal activities. Achromatic settings were measured on a CRT before and after each daily exposure with the lenses on and off, and were preceded by 5 min of dark adaptation to control for short-term chromatic adaptation. During each day, there was a large shift in the white settings consistent with a partial compensation for the added lens density. However, there was little to no evidence of an afterimage at the end of each daily session, and participants’ perceptual nulls were roughly aligned with the nulls for short-term chromatic adaptation, suggesting a rapid renormalization when the lenses were removed. The long-term drift was also extinguished by brief exposure to a white adapting field. The results point to distinct timescales and potentially distinct mechanisms compensating for changes in the chromatic sensitivity of the observer.

The role of color in motion feature-binding errors

Color-motion feature-binding errors occur in the periphery when half of the objects are red and move downward, and the other half are green and move upward. When red and green objects in the central visual field are similar but move in the opposite directions (red upward, green downward), peripheral objects often take on the perceived motion direction of the like-colored central objects (Wu, Kanai, & Shimojo, 2004). The present study determined whether color is essential to elicit these motion-binding errors, and tested two hypotheses that attempt to explain them. One hypothesis holds that binding errors occur because peripheral and central objects become linked if they have combinations of features in common. A peripheral object's link to central objects overwhelms its posited weak peripheral representation for motion feature binding, so the peripheral object appears to move in the direction of the linked central objects. Eliminating color by making all stimuli achromatic, therefore, should not increase peripheral binding errors. An alternative hypothesis is that binding errors depend on the overall feature correspondence among central and peripheral features represented at a preconjunctive level. In this case, binding errors may increase when all objects are changed to achromatic because chromatic central/peripheral correspondence is maximal (100%). Experiments showed more motion-binding errors with all-achromatic objects than with half red and half green objects. This and additional findings imply that peripheral motion-binding errors (a) can be elicited without color and (b) depend at least in part on the similarity of central and peripheral features represented preconjunctively.

In multiple situational light settings, visual observation for skin colour assessment is comparable with colorimeter measurement

BACKGROUND

Finding inexpensive and reliable techniques for assessing skin colour is important, given that it is related to several adverse human health outcomes. Visual observation is considered a subjective approach assessment and, even when made by trained assessor, concern has been raised about the need for controlled lighting in the study venue. The aim of this study is to determine whether visual skin colour assessments correlate with objective skin colour measurements in study venues with different lighting types and configurations.

METHODS

Two trained investigators, with confirmed visual acuity, visually classified the inner, upper arm skin colour of 556 adults using Munsell(®) colour classifications converted to Individual Typology Angle (°ITA) values based on published data. Skin colour at the same anatomic site was also measured using a colorimeter. Each participant was assessed in one of 10 different buildings, each with a different study day. Munsell(®) -derived °ITA values were compared to colorimeter °ITA values for the full sample and by building/day.

RESULTS

We found a strong positive, monotonic correlation between Munsell(®) derived °ITA values and colorimeter °ITA values for all participants (Spearman ρ = 0.8585, P < 0.001). Similar relationships were found when Munsell(®) and colorimeter °ITA values were compared for participants assessed in the same building for all 10 buildings (Spearman ρ values ranged from 0.797 to 0.934, all correlations were statistically significant at P < 0.001).

CONCLUSION

It is possible to visually assess individual skin colour in multiple situational lighting settings and retrieve results that are comparable with objective measurements of skin colour. This was true for individuals of varying population groups and skin pigmentation.

Probing the functions of contextual modulation by adapting images rather than observers

Countless visual aftereffects have illustrated how visual sensitivity and perception can be biased by adaptation to the recent temporal context. This contextual modulation has been proposed to serve a variety of functions, but the actual benefits of adaptation remain uncertain. We describe an approach we have recently developed for exploring these benefits by adapting images instead of observers, to simulate how images should appear under theoretically optimal states of adaptation. This allows the long-term consequences of adaptation to be evaluated in ways that are difficult to probe by adapting observers, and provides a common framework for understanding how visual coding changes when the environment or the observer changes, or for evaluating how the effects of temporal context depend on different models of visual coding or the adaptation processes. The approach is illustrated for the specific case of adaptation to color, for which the initial neural coding and adaptation processes are relatively well understood, but can in principle be applied to examine the consequences of adaptation for any stimulus dimension. A simple calibration that adjusts each neuron's sensitivity according to the stimulus level it is exposed to is sufficient to normalize visual coding and generate a host of benefits, from increased efficiency to perceptual constancy to enhanced discrimination. This temporal normalization may also provide an important precursor for the effective operation of contextual mechanisms operating across space or feature dimensions. To the extent that the effects of adaptation can be predicted, images from new environments could be "pre-adapted" to match them to the observer, eliminating the need for observers to adapt.