Visual appearance and sensitivity are mediated by distinct mechanisms

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This dataset contains both behavioral and fMRI data from the publication “Visual appearance and sensitivity are mediated by distinct mechanisms” in Neuropsychologia. Detailed information about the experimental design and procedures can be found in the article. In a previous study, using an illusory stimulus inspired by Adelson's checkerboard (Adelson, 1995), we demonstrated that contrast appearance depends on high-level context (Pamir & Boyaci, 2016). In the current study, we utilized this effect to investigate the neural mechanisms underlying appearance and sensitivity judgments of visual stimuli using psychophysics and fMRI. Specifically, we measured contrast appearance judgments, contrast detection thresholds, and BOLD activity related to contrast gratings in context. Our results showed that: 1. Incremental, but not decremental, gratings appeared to have higher contrast on the perceptually lighter patch compared to those on the darker patch. 2. Yet, for both types of gratings, thresholds were lower when contrast gratings were superimposed on the lighter patch than those on the darker patch. 3. Activity in the primary visual cortex (V1) aligned well with the sensitivity performance. These results suggest that partly distinct mechanisms underlie sensitivity and appearance and, further, V1 plays an important role in sensitivity judgments.

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