Visual Psychophysics and Physiology

Dr Riggs, to whom this book is dedicated, had great influence in training a sizable group of visual scientists presently prominent in this country. It is more than fitting that a volume on visual psychophysics and physiology should be prepared honoring Dr Riggs, not the least of whose many contributions to the physiologic basis of ophthalmology includes having first introduced electroretinography as a clinical tool. Visual psychophysical phenomena measured and correlated with quantitative physiologic events are the hallmark of modern studies and are mostly conducted in laboratories associated with departments of psychology, which are, unfortunately, too often separated from departments of ophthalmology by subject and procedure. This volume attempts to build bridges. The chapters form a logical progression from an attempted definition of light, mind, and matter to physiologic mechanisms in the retina and visual pathway of animals; threshold, sensitivity, suppression, rivalry, and adaptation in man; human color vision and