Abstract:

Visual adaptation enables the visual system to continuously adjust to the environment, improving the perception of the world. It has been found that adaptation affects the processing of many fundamental visual qualities, such as luminance, contrast, motion, color, etc., as well as more complex stimuli, e.g. faces. Adaptation occurs at multiple stages along the visual processing stream, from retina to primary visual cortex and beyond (e.g. extrastriate cortex, fusiform face areas). The mechanical interpretation of visual adaptation has been developed from the earlier account of neural fatigue to the nowadays more popular normalization models. Recent adaptation studies demonstrate that visual adaptation is controlled by multiple distinct mechanisms that operate at differing timescales, which may endow the visual system with the ability to accommodate environmental changes over different timescales.

Key words: visual adaptation, neural substrates, timescale, fatigue, renormalization