Responses to Static Visual Images in Macaque Lateral Geniculate Nucleus: Implications for Adaptation, Negative Afterimages, and Visual Fading

Adaptation to static scenes is a familiar and fundamental aspect of visual perception that causes negative afterimages, fading, and many other visual illusions. To establish a foundation for understanding the neuronal bases of such phenomena and to constrain the contributions of retinal versus cortical processing, we studied the responses of neurons in the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus during and after the presentation of prolonged static visual stimuli. We found that parvocellular (P) cells (the more numerous and color-sensitive pathway) showed response adaptation with a time constant on the order of tens of seconds and that their response after the removal of a visual stimulus lasting 1 min was similar in amplitude and time course to the response evoked by the photographic negative stimulus. Magnocellular (M) cells (the faster-conducting and achromatic pathway) had after responses that were substantially weaker than responses evoked by patterned visual stimuli. This difference points to the existence of an adaptive mechanism in the P-pathway that is absent or impaired in the M-pathway and is inconsistent with full adaptation of photoreceptors, which feed both pathways. Cells in both pathways often maintained a substantial tonic response throughout 1 min stimuli, suggesting that these major feedforward inputs to cortex adapt too slowly to account for visual fading. Our findings suggest that faster-adapting mechanisms in cortex are likely to be required to account for the dynamics of perception during and after the viewing of prolonged static images.