Abstract
Adaptation can optimize information processing by allowing the visual system to always adjust to the environment. However, only a few studies have investigated how the visual system makes adjustments to repeatedly occurring changes in the input, still less about the related neural mechanism. Our previous study found that contrast adaptation attenuated after multiple daily sessions of repeated adaptation, which was explained by the habituation of either the adapter’s effective strength or the adaptation mechanisms. To examine the former hypothesis, in the present study we used the frequency tagging technique to measure the adapter-elicited steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) amplitudes. Participants repeatedly adapted to the same contrast adapter in a top-up manner for six continuous days, which was called training of adaptation. The behavioral adaptation effect and SSVEP response to the trained adapter and an untrained control adapter were measured before and after training. The psychophysical results showed that the effect of adaptation in the trained condition significantly reduced after training, replicating our previous finding. Contradicting the prediction of the hypothesis that repeated adaptation attenuated the effective strength of the adapter, the SSVEP amplitude was unchanged after training, which was further confirmed by an equivalence test. Taken together, the results challenge the account of habituation of adapter in repeated adaptation, while leaving the account of habituation of adaptation mechanism to be tested.
Highlights
The human visual system can adjust its function with the change of environment, reflecting the plasticity of the visual system
The linear trend analysis indicated that the contrast adaptation effect of the trained condition decreased significantly over training (t(17) = 4.379, p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 1.460, Figure 2A)
The present results replicated our previous findings that the contrast adaptation effect attenuated after several days of training of adaptation
Summary
The human visual system can adjust its function with the change of environment, reflecting the plasticity of the visual system. Both short-term and long-term experiences can alter our visual function. Briefly viewing a stimulus alters the visual sensitivity or perception when exposed to a new stimulus (Kohn, 2007; Webster, 2011, 2015). This phenomenon, named adaptation, could be observed after exposure to the adapting stimulus for as short as less than 1 s. Some recent studies, including ours, suggest that repeated exposure to the adapter or training of an adapter-related visual task could affect the adaptation effect (Yehezkel et al, 2010; Haak et al, 2014; Dong et al, 2016; Engel et al, 2016; Pinchuk-Yacobi et al, 2016; Dong and Bao, 2019), implying the interactive relationship between perceptual learning and adaptation
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