Contrast sensitivity testing.

Testing and reporting contrast sensitivity.

Contrast sensitivity testing in clinical practice.

A survey of ophthalmic publications carried out using the Medline database revealed that during 1983 the search terms contrast and sensitivity appeared in immediate conjunction within the indexing fields of 74 publications. By 1993, this figure had risen to 325. Though a search conducted in this manner would by no means retrieve all the relevant publications, this fourfold increase would sugges...

Measuring contrast sensitivity

Contrast sensitivity defines the threshold between the visible and invisible, which has obvious significance for basic and clinical vision science. Fechner's 1860 review reported that threshold contrast is 1% for a remarkably wide range of targets and conditions. While printed charts are still in use, computer testing is becoming more popular because it offers efficient adaptive measurement of ...

Contrast sensitivity throughout adulthood.

Previous studies of spatial contrast sensitivity in adulthood have produced conflicting results. To clarify the situation, we measured contrast sensitivity functions on a large sample of adults (n = 91), ranging in age from 19 to 87. All observers were free from significant ocular pathology and were individually refracted for the test distance. Sensitivity for stationary gratings of low spatial...

Octopaminergic modulation of contrast sensitivity

Sensory systems adapt to prolonged stimulation by decreasing their response to continuous stimuli. Whereas visual motion adaptation has traditionally been studied in immobilized animals, recent work indicates that the animal's behavioral state influences the response properties of higher-order motion vision-sensitive neurons. During insect flight octopamine is released, and pharmacological octo...