Abstract

The color opponent type I cells of primates multiplex color and luminance signals, adding center and surround responses for color and subtracting center and surround response for luminance [Ingling and Martinez, Vision Res. 23, 1495 (1983)]. Thus color is encoded by a low pass filter and luminance is encoded by a bandpass filter. The overlap of the low pass chromatic and bandpass achromatic response functions in frequency space places fundamental limits on recovery of the individual signals. This may be shown explicitly using information theory. One consequence of color and luminance multiplexing is that color may be imputed to signals that contain only luminance information. Employing an analog of signal detection theory, it can be shown that the overlap of the color and luminance temporal contrast sensitivity functions predicts the excitation purity vs temporal frequency functions found for pattern-induced flicker colors by Jarvis [Vision Res. 17, 445 (1977)]. The result suggests that stimuli that produce pattern-induced flicker colors (e.g., Benham's Top) constitute a unique probe of the spatiotemporal properties of the various ganglion cells that make up the color opponent channels.

© 1989 Optical Society of America