Foveal and extra-foveal influences on rod hue biases

Abstract

Green, blue and short-wavelength-red rod hue biases are strongest and most reliable with large, dimly-mesopic, extra-foveal stimuli but tend to diminish when stimuli are confined to a small area of the central fovea. This study explores how the stimulation of foveal and extra-foveal areas interact in determining rod hue biases, and whether large stimuli are as effective for revealing rod hue biases when foveally centered as when eccentrically centered. We assessed rod influence by measuring wavelengths of unique green and unique yellow (with 1-s duration, 1 log scot td stimuli and a staircase procedure) under bleached and dark-adapted conditions. We measured unique hues with foveally centered 2 degrees - and 7.4 degrees -diameter disks, a 7.4 degrees (outer) x 2 degrees (inner) diameter annulus, and a 7 degrees -eccentric, 7.4 degrees -diameter disk. The rod green bias (shift of unique yellow locus) was typically <10 nm and remained fairly constant across spatial configurations, indicating no special foveal influence. The rod blue bias (shift of unique green) varied more among observers and spatial configurations, reaching up to 47 nm. However, stimuli covering the fovea typically produced no rod blue bias. Thus, the present results add differences in spatial dependence (i.e., foveal/extra-foveal interaction) between green and blue rod biases to previously demonstrated differences (e.g., differences in amount of light level dependence, in time course and in the spectral range influenced by each bias).