Abstract
We measured the interocular transfer and summation of chromatic adaptation in order to test the hypothesis that chromatic adaptation yields not only in our retina but also after binocular fusion in our visual system.
At first, the summation of chromatic adaptation on time course were measured by which three female subjects were asked to adjust the test stimuli to neither reddish nor greenish, after ten minutes chromatic adaptation and fifteen seconds blank. The adaptation stimulus was uniform green presented on CRT, and test stimuli, which changed from red to green, were isoluminant for each subject with flicker photometry. This measurement was repeated three times in each ten minutes adaptation, and this session repeated four times, then total adaptation was amounted to forty minutes and twelve measurements were done. The result is the sensitivity of redness decreased by green adaptation depends on adaptation time, and this fact showed the effects of chromatic adaptation were stored up in our visual system.
In second experiment subjects were asked to adjust a test stimulus to non-reddish and non-greenish after two chromatic adaptation sets. One was mutual adaptation condition in which adaptational stimuli were presented for ten minutes to each eye alternately, while the other was simultaneous adaptation condition in which both eye were adapted simultaneously. The result of these measurement showed that the strength of mutual condition were stronger than that of simultaneous adaptation between subjects who adapted either mutual or simultaneous adaptation and within subjects who adapted in both condition. However each eye and the mechanism after binocular fusion were exposed for same duration in simultaneous condition, the mechanism after binocular fusion was exposed continuously all time in mutual condition. Then the difference of these two adaptational conditions suggests that the mechanism after binocular fusion were also effected by chromatic adaptation.
In third experiments, subjects adapted one eye and the effects of the adaptation were measured with the other eye. The duration of exposure of adaptation stimuli were twenty minutes and the adaptation were repeated several times. The result showed that the interocular transfer of chromatic adaptation occurred, and this also suggest that the higher visual mechanism after binocular fusion are also affected by chromatic adaptation.