Investigating visual mechanisms underlying scene brightness

Abstract

Short-wavelength (<500 nm) output of light sources enhances scene brightness perception in the low-to-moderate photopic range. This appears to be partially explained by a contribution from short-wavelength cones. Recent evidence from experiments on humans suggests that intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs) containing the photopigment melanopsin might also contribute to spectral sensitivity for scene brightness perception. An experiment was conducted to investigate this possibility at two different light levels, near 10 lx and near 100 lx. Subjects provided forced-choice brightness judgments and relative brightness magnitude judgments when comparing two different amber-coloured stimuli with similar chromaticities. A provisional brightness metric including an ipRGC contribution was able to predict the data with substantially smaller errors than a metric based on cone input only.