A study on the effects of constant polarizing current on the human electroretinogram and visual sensitivity.

Granit and Helme (1) found that the electroretinogram (ERG) of the darkadapted frog's eye was effected by a constant electric current running across the retina (polarizing current). They reported that both band d-waves of ERG were enhanced by the current flowing through the retina from the outside into the inside of the bulb (this direction of the current was called "inside cathode"), but they were diminished by the current of the opposite direction (this direction was called "outside cathode"). The recent contributions to this problem were made by Toida, Goto and Kuriyama (2), Bnoit and Cornu (3), Cornu and Gonella (4) and Blindley (5); all of their works consisted in measurement of ERG taken from frog's eye. Recently, by means of a technique involving an electrode fixed to a contact lens, it has become possible to record easily electrical responses originating in the human retina itself. An attempt, therefore, was made by us (6) to compare the results which were obtained from frog's eye by the above mentioned in vestigators with those obtained from the human eye. At the same time, we have made some studies on the phenomena reported by Kravkov and Galochkina (7). We examined, using an adaptometer, the variation in visual sensitivity (reciprocal of light threshold) due to the polarization of the eye as before. Hence, the present experiments afford an opportunity of comparing between both effects of polarization on the ERG and visual sensitivity, that is, a com of electrophysiological and psychophysical methods for exploring the single visual problem. The experiments reported below will prove that these two very different tests show the results well consistent with each other.