Stochastic resonance in visual sensitivity.

Abstract

It is well known from psychophysical studies that stochastic resonance, in its simplest threshold paradigm, can be used as a tool to measure the detection sensitivity to fine details in noise contaminated stimuli. In the present manuscript, we report simulation studies conducted in the similar threshold paradigm of stochastic resonance. We have estimated the contrast sensitivity in detecting noisy sine-wave stimuli, with varying area and spatial frequency, as a function of noise strength. In all the cases, the measured sensitivity attained a peak at intermediate noise strength, which indicate the occurrence of stochastic resonance. The peak sensitivity exhibited a strong dependence on area and spatial frequency of the stimulus. We show that the peak contrast sensitivity varies with spatial frequency in a nonmonotonic fashion and the qualitative nature of the sensitivity variation is in good agreement with human contrast sensitivity function. We also demonstrate that the peak sensitivity first increases and then saturates with increasing area, and this result is in line with the results of psychophysical experiments. Additionally, we also show that critical area, denoting the saturation of contrast sensitivity, decreases with spatial frequency and the associated maximum contrast sensitivity varies with spatial frequency in a manner that is consistent with the results of psychophysical experiments. In all the studies, the sensitivities were elevated via a nonlinear filtering operation called stochastic resonance. Because of this nonlinear effect, it was not guaranteed that the sensitivities, estimated at each frequency, would be in agreement with the corresponding results of psychophysical experiments; on the contrary, close agreements were observed between our results and the findings of psychophysical investigations. These observations indicate the utility of stochastic resonance in human vision and suggest that this paradigm can be useful in psychophysical studies.