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Perceptual Learning of Motion Leads to Faster Flicker Perception

Critical flicker fusion thresholds (CFFT) describe when quick amplitude modulations of a light source become undetectable as the frequency of the modulation increases. The threshold at which CFF occurs has been shown to remain constant under repeated testing. Additionally, CFF thresholds are correla...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Seitz, Aaron R., Nanez, Jose E., Holloway, Steve R., Watanabe, Takeo
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2006
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1762365/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17183655
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0000028
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author Seitz, Aaron R.
Nanez, Jose E.
Holloway, Steve R.
Watanabe, Takeo
author_facet Seitz, Aaron R.
Nanez, Jose E.
Holloway, Steve R.
Watanabe, Takeo
author_sort Seitz, Aaron R.
collection PubMed
description Critical flicker fusion thresholds (CFFT) describe when quick amplitude modulations of a light source become undetectable as the frequency of the modulation increases. The threshold at which CFF occurs has been shown to remain constant under repeated testing. Additionally, CFF thresholds are correlated with various measures of intelligence, and have been regarded by clinicians as a general measure of cortical processing capacity. For these reasons, CFF is used as a cognitive indicator in drug studies, as a measure of fatigue, and has been suggested as a diagnostic measure for various brain diseases. Here we report that CFFT increases dramatically in subjects who are trained with a motion-direction learning procedure. Control tasks demonstrate that CFFT changes are tightly coupled with improvements in discriminating the direction of motion stimuli, and are likely related to plasticity in low-level visual areas that are specialized to process motion signals. This plasticity is long-lasting and is retained for at least one year after training. Combined, these results show that CFFT relates to a specialized sensory process and bring into question that CFFT is a measure of high-level, or general, processes.
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spelling pubmed-17623652007-01-04 Perceptual Learning of Motion Leads to Faster Flicker Perception Seitz, Aaron R. Nanez, Jose E. Holloway, Steve R. Watanabe, Takeo PLoS One Research Article Critical flicker fusion thresholds (CFFT) describe when quick amplitude modulations of a light source become undetectable as the frequency of the modulation increases. The threshold at which CFF occurs has been shown to remain constant under repeated testing. Additionally, CFF thresholds are correlated with various measures of intelligence, and have been regarded by clinicians as a general measure of cortical processing capacity. For these reasons, CFF is used as a cognitive indicator in drug studies, as a measure of fatigue, and has been suggested as a diagnostic measure for various brain diseases. Here we report that CFFT increases dramatically in subjects who are trained with a motion-direction learning procedure. Control tasks demonstrate that CFFT changes are tightly coupled with improvements in discriminating the direction of motion stimuli, and are likely related to plasticity in low-level visual areas that are specialized to process motion signals. This plasticity is long-lasting and is retained for at least one year after training. Combined, these results show that CFFT relates to a specialized sensory process and bring into question that CFFT is a measure of high-level, or general, processes. Public Library of Science 2006-12-20 /pmc/articles/PMC1762365/ /pubmed/17183655 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0000028 Text en Seitz et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Seitz, Aaron R.
Nanez, Jose E.
Holloway, Steve R.
Watanabe, Takeo
Perceptual Learning of Motion Leads to Faster Flicker Perception
title Perceptual Learning of Motion Leads to Faster Flicker Perception
title_full Perceptual Learning of Motion Leads to Faster Flicker Perception
title_fullStr Perceptual Learning of Motion Leads to Faster Flicker Perception
title_full_unstemmed Perceptual Learning of Motion Leads to Faster Flicker Perception
title_short Perceptual Learning of Motion Leads to Faster Flicker Perception
title_sort perceptual learning of motion leads to faster flicker perception
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1762365/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17183655
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0000028
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