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Resolution acuity across the visual field for mesopic and scotopic illumination

We investigated the classical question of why visual acuity decreases with decreasing retinal illuminance by holding retinal eccentricity fixed while illumination varied. Our results indicate that acuity is largely independent of illuminance at any given retinal location, which suggests that under c...

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Autores principales: Wilkinson, Michael O., Anderson, Roger S., Bradley, Arthur, Thibos, Larry N.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7545082/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33007081
http://dx.doi.org/10.1167/jov.20.10.7
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author Wilkinson, Michael O.
Anderson, Roger S.
Bradley, Arthur
Thibos, Larry N.
author_facet Wilkinson, Michael O.
Anderson, Roger S.
Bradley, Arthur
Thibos, Larry N.
author_sort Wilkinson, Michael O.
collection PubMed
description We investigated the classical question of why visual acuity decreases with decreasing retinal illuminance by holding retinal eccentricity fixed while illumination varied. Our results indicate that acuity is largely independent of illuminance at any given retinal location, which suggests that under classical free-viewing conditions acuity improves as illumination increases from rod threshold to rod saturation because the retinal location of the stimulus is permitted to migrate from a peripheral location of maximum sensitivity but poor acuity to the foveal location of maximum acuity but poor sensitivity. Comparison with anatomical sampling density of retinal neurons suggests that mesopic acuity at all eccentricities and scotopic acuity for eccentricities beyond about 20° is limited by the spacing of midget ganglion cells. In central retina, however, scotopic acuity is further limited by spatial filtering due to spatial summation within the large, overlapping receptive fields of the A-II class of amacrine cells interposed in the rod pathway between rod bipolars and midget ganglion cells. Our results offer a mechanistic interpretation of the clinical metrics for low-luminance visual dysfunction used to monitor progression of retinal disease.
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spelling pubmed-75450822020-10-23 Resolution acuity across the visual field for mesopic and scotopic illumination Wilkinson, Michael O. Anderson, Roger S. Bradley, Arthur Thibos, Larry N. J Vis Article We investigated the classical question of why visual acuity decreases with decreasing retinal illuminance by holding retinal eccentricity fixed while illumination varied. Our results indicate that acuity is largely independent of illuminance at any given retinal location, which suggests that under classical free-viewing conditions acuity improves as illumination increases from rod threshold to rod saturation because the retinal location of the stimulus is permitted to migrate from a peripheral location of maximum sensitivity but poor acuity to the foveal location of maximum acuity but poor sensitivity. Comparison with anatomical sampling density of retinal neurons suggests that mesopic acuity at all eccentricities and scotopic acuity for eccentricities beyond about 20° is limited by the spacing of midget ganglion cells. In central retina, however, scotopic acuity is further limited by spatial filtering due to spatial summation within the large, overlapping receptive fields of the A-II class of amacrine cells interposed in the rod pathway between rod bipolars and midget ganglion cells. Our results offer a mechanistic interpretation of the clinical metrics for low-luminance visual dysfunction used to monitor progression of retinal disease. The Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology 2020-10-02 /pmc/articles/PMC7545082/ /pubmed/33007081 http://dx.doi.org/10.1167/jov.20.10.7 Text en Copyright 2020 The Authors http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
spellingShingle Article
Wilkinson, Michael O.
Anderson, Roger S.
Bradley, Arthur
Thibos, Larry N.
Resolution acuity across the visual field for mesopic and scotopic illumination
title Resolution acuity across the visual field for mesopic and scotopic illumination
title_full Resolution acuity across the visual field for mesopic and scotopic illumination
title_fullStr Resolution acuity across the visual field for mesopic and scotopic illumination
title_full_unstemmed Resolution acuity across the visual field for mesopic and scotopic illumination
title_short Resolution acuity across the visual field for mesopic and scotopic illumination
title_sort resolution acuity across the visual field for mesopic and scotopic illumination
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7545082/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33007081
http://dx.doi.org/10.1167/jov.20.10.7
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