Abstract
Neural adaptation is the phenomenon in which a brain response is smaller when a stimulus is presented a second time. Although the nature of adaptation on event-related potentials (ERPs) has been studied in the auditory domain (Lu et al., 1992), there has never been a formal study of the adaptation and recovery of visual ERPs. Here, we recorded visual ERPs from participants performing a visual discrimination task in which were shown either one simple target for 100ms, or two targets separated by 500, 1000, 1500, or 1750ms. We found that the visual P1 was reduced in amplitude at the shortest lag relative to the single stimulus baseline and the longer lags. However, the amplitude of the N1 was not significantly reduced, even at the shortest lag. This indicates that even with a 400 ms inter-stimulus interval the visual ERPs show little adaptation, with only the P1 still recovering. These findings indicate the earliest visual ERPs recover from adaptation far more quickly than when measured using neuroimaging or when ERPs are elicited by other stimuli from other sensory modalities.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2017