Janus J Kulikowski

• PhD (Physiology)
• Professor at The University of Manchester

Profound vision loss occurs after prolonged exposure to an unchanging featureless visual environment. The effect is sometimes called visual fade. Here we investigate this phenomenon in the color domain using two different experiments. In the first experiment we determine the time needed for a colored background to appear achromatic. Four background...

The coding of line orientation in the visual system has been investigated extensively. During the prolonged viewing of a stimulus, the perceived orientation continuously changes (normalization effect). Also, the orientation of the adapting stimulus and the background stimuli influence the perceived orientation of the subsequently displayed stimulus...

Many experiments have demonstrated that the rhythms in the brain influence the initial perceptual information processing. We investigated whether the alternation rate of the perception of a Necker cube depends on the frequency and duration of a flashing Necker cube. We hypothesize that synchronization between the external rhythm of a flashing stimu...

Accurate color judgments rely on a powerful cognitive component. Here we compare the performance of color constancy under real and simulated conditions. Shifts in the color plane induced by illuminant A (2750 K) and illuminant S ( ) were measured using asymmetric color matching. A general linear model was used to predict performance from the follow...

Many experiments have demonstrated that the rhythms in the brain influence an initial information processing. We investigated whether the alternation rate of the perception of a Necker cube depended on the degree of synchronization between two streams of spikes, one stemming from an external flashing image and the other from the action of an intern...

Many experiments have demonstrated that the rhythms in the brain influence an initial information processing. We investigated whether the alternation rate of the perception of a Necker cube depended on the degree of synchronization between two streams of spikes, one stemming from an external flashing image and the other from the action of an intern...

The asymmetric sequential color-matching technique was used to determine the shifts in chromaticity of real Munsell chips induced by four test illuminants. The reference illuminant was C. Illuminants green (G) and purple (P) induced shifts orthogonal to the Planckian locus, while illuminants S and A induced shifts along the Planckian locus. Vectors...

Straipsnyje pasiūlytas būdas, kaip įvertinti spalvų suvokimo konstantiškumas. Eksperimento rezultatai patvirtino, kad spalvų suvokimo konstantiškumas yra linijinis modelis. Linijinis operatorius buvo apskaičiuotas iš chromatinių koordinačių, gautų iš trijų daviklių dviem apšvietimo sąlygomis. Operatoriaus analizė atlikta, siekiant išaiškinti psicho...

The link between chromatic constancy (compensation for hue and saturation shifts) and lightness constancy (compensation for a change in surface reflectance) was tested theoretically by computing cone contrasts and by asymmetric matching experiments. The effect of a thin achromatic line (a frame) around the test sample was tested empirically. When t...

It is important to know whether the binocular 3-D space perception is available without geometrical cues. In this regard, the paper deals with the question, whether the differences in monocular contrast of the object images at the left and right retina affect the perceived direction and depth of the object in space. The binocular analyzer model, in...

The relative involvement of different temporal frequency-selective filters underlying detection of chromatic stimuli were studied. Diverse spectral stimuli were used, namely flashed blue and yellow light spots, wide bars and narrow bars. The stimuli were temporally modulated in luminance having constant wavelength. Although stimulus elongation appa...

This study addresses the problem whether duration of the dominant time (i.e., time interval during which the subject perceives only one of two presented stimuli under binocular rivalry) depends upon frequency of flashes of monocular stimuli. Two orthogonal black bars against white backgrounds were presented tachistoscopically for the left and right...

We investigated physiological mechanisms of binocular space perception. According to the original "energy model" (3,5), a perceived depth of object should not depend on differences in luminance contrasts of its monocular images. The data obtained by different authors are contradictory(1,2,4,6-8). Reasons for these contradictions were addressed. Sti...

Purpose To investigate the temporal response properties of magnocellular, parvocellular and koniocellular pathways using contrast increment/decrement visual evoked potentials (VEPs). Methods Static achromatic and isoluminant chromatic gratings were generated on a monitor (Michelson contrast 0.05 to 0.6). Chromatic gratings were modulated along R/G...

Typical daylight extends from blue (morning sky) to orangey red (evening sky) and is represented mathematically as the Daylight Locus in color space. In this study, we investigate the impact of this daylight variation on human color vision. Thirty-eight color normal human observers performed an asymmetric color match in the near peripheral visual f...

Cone contrast remains constant, when the same object/background is seen under different illuminations—the von Kries rule [Shevell, Vis. Res. 18, 1649 (1978)]. Here we explore this idea using asymmetric color matching. We find that von Kries adaptation holds, regardless of whether chromatic constancy index is low or high. When illumination changes t...

A characteristic shift in hue and saturation occurs when colored targets are viewed peripherally compared with centrally. Four hues, one in each of the red, blue, green, and yellow regions of color space, remain unchanged when presented in the peripheral field. Apart from green, these peripherally invariant hues correspond almost exactly in color s...

It is known that there is a distortion of hue and saturation in the peripheral visual field. In a previous study, when an asymmetric matching paradigm was used, four hues in the blue, red, yellow and green regions of colour space were unchanged and these were referred to as peripherally invariant (Parry et al., J Opt Soc Am A, 23, 2006, 1586). Thre...

The relative involvement of different temporal frequency-selective filters underlying detection of chromatic stimuli was studied. Diverse spectral stimuli were used, namely flashed blue and yellow light spots, wide bars, and narrow bars. The stimuli were temporally modulated in luminance having constant wavelength. Although the bar-like stimuli app...

To assess the effects of macular pigment optical density ~MPOD! on isoluminant stimuli and to quantify MPOD electrophysiologically, MPOD distribution profiles were obtained in normal subjects using minimum motion and minimum flicker photometry. Isoluminance of VEP stimuli was determined using minimum flicker and tritan confusion lines were determin...

Gibson [ J. Exp. Psychol. 16, 1 (1993) ] observed that during prolonged viewing, a line perceptually rotates toward the nearest vertical or horizontal meridian (the normalization effect), and moreover, the perceived orientation of a subsequently presented line depends on the orientation of the adapting one (the tilt after-effect). The mechanisms of...

The purpose of this study is to establish whether nasal-temporal differences in cone photoreceptor distributions are linked to differences in colour matching performance in the two hemi-fields. Perceived shifts in chromaticity were measured using an asymmetric matching paradigm. They were expressed in terms of hue rotations and relative saturation...

Colour information is processed by many stages in the visual system. Primate colour vision relies on three photoreceptors, cones, which sample visible light and send signals to the second stage, cone–opponent units. Surprisingly this stage determines not only the threshold detection for chromatic patches, but also matching surface colours under var...

has noted that during prolonged viewing a line perceptually rotates towards the nearest vertical or horizontal meridian. This is known as the normalization effect, but the phenomenon remains poorly investigated. According to our experimental results, the adapting line perceptually rotates to the nearest of three orientations: vertical, horizontal o...

Historically, inflow and outflow hypotheses have been formulated as the primary explanations for perceptual stability. Central to these hypotheses is the postulation that, following an intended eye movement, knowledge of eye position cancels the consequences of the retinal image motion. Here, we reconsider the evidence for the extra-retinal signal...

Dar J. J. Gibsonas pastebėjo, kad ilgai stebimos tiesės suvokiamas polinkis kinta – ji subjektyviai sukasi link artimesnės vertikalios arba horizontalios tiesės. Šį efektą J. J. Gibsonas pavadino normalizacijos efektu. Iki šiol šis gerai žinomas reiškinys mažai tyrinėtas. Mes eksperimentais parodėme, kad ilgai stebima tiesė subjektyviai sukasi link...

A successive asymmetric colour-matching task was used to study the changes in colour appearance of simulated Munsell samples. Colour shifts were induced with two Planckian illuminants, standard illuminant A (u'=0.256, v'=0.524) and illuminant S (u'=0.174, v'=0.392). Measurements were conducted with a 20 degrees field and a 120 degrees field. Adapta...

A successive, asymmetric color-matching paradigm was used to investigate the link between cone contrast and the stability of perceived colors. We measured the perceived color shifts of 10 Munsell samples, induced by test illuminant A, simulated in u'v' color space. The capacity of the visual system to resist these shifts, otherwise known as color c...

To assess the effects of macular pigment optical density (MPOD) on isoluminant stimuli and to quantify MPOD electrophysiologically, MPOD distribution profiles were obtained in normal subjects using minimum motion and minimum flicker photometry. Isoluminance of VEP stimuli was determined using minimum flicker and tritan confusion lines were determin...

The light reflected from an object depends both on the object's surface and on the illuminant. Visual systems attempt to resolve this intrinsic ambiguity by comparing the light reflected from the object with respect to the background by computing the difference between the object-background light sampled by three cones. The cone-contrasts for the s...

Sequential asymmetrical colour matching of forty Munsell samples simulated under illuminant C and one of eight test illuminants was carried out. The subjects matched the appearance of each sample under illuminant C with its appearance under the test illuminant. Samples and background (N7) were presented for 1 s under the test illuminant and were is...

A cone-opponent-based vector model is used to derive the activity in the red-green, yellow-blue, and achromatic channels during a sequential asymmetric colour-matching experiment. Forty Munsell samples, simulated under illuminant C, were matched with their appearance under eight test illuminants. The test samples and backgrounds were photometricall...

The perceptual stability of an object's color under different illuminants is called color constancy. We created a neural network to investigate this phenomenon. The net consisted of one input channel for the background and one for the test object. Each channel had a set of three (L, M, and S) receptors that were transmitting to three opponent neuro...

Objektų spalvų suvokimas aiškinamas dviem procesais. Atlikti bandomieji tyrimai, kuriais nustatyta kontrasto ir fono adaptacijos įtaka spalvų suvokimui. Bandyme dalyvavo keturi tiriamieji. Jų spalvinis regėjimas buvo normalus. 40 spalvotų stimulų ir 6 apšvietimai buvo generuojami vaizduoklio ekrane. Tiriamiesiems buvo rodomas spalvotas objektas pil...

Visual evoked potentials (VEPs) provide an objective technique for monitoring the integrity of visual pathways and have been used to monitor the activity of post-receptoral chromatic mechanisms. The temporal properties of visual processing may now be characterized in terms of VEP integration time, defined as the stimulus duration during which respo...

The visual system consists of parallel processing channels whose separation, proposed by psychophysicists, is sometimes doubted in view of the multi-modal responses of many visual cortical neurons. Thus psychophysical experiments should be designed to test critically whether or not the threshold detection mechanisms are independent and can serve to...

We propose asimple method of monitoring separate visual pathways inlightly sedated monkeys using chromatic and achromatic gratings of low contrast, which are known to activate predominantly either parvo- or magno-systems. The scalp Visual Evoked Potentials (VEPs) are compared with simultaneously recorded intra-cortical VEPs which in turn are compar...

We investigated whether responses of single cells in the striate cortex of anaesthetized macaque monkeys exhibit signatures of both parvocellular (P) and magnocellular (M) inputs from the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus (dLGN). We used a palette of 128 isoluminant hues at four different saturation levels to test responses to chromatic stimuli aga...

The spatial and temporal properties of human colour vision are examined using isoluminant, red--green and blue--yellow tritanopic gratings. Chromatic sensitivity is found to be low-pass as a function of both spatial and temporal frequency along all the chromatic axes investigated, including the tritanopic confusion lines employed to examine the pro...

Two experiments were performed to determine the effectiveness of the blue and green phosphor emissions of a colour monitor as stimuli for macular pigment (MP) assessment by flicker photometry. (1) A subject with very little MP made foveal and extrafoveal (5°) minimum flicker matches through calibrated carotenoid solutions simulating MP in the 0.0–0...

Human visual evoked potentials (VEPs) were elicited by alternately increasing and decreasing contrast by 0.1 Michelson units in the presence of an in-phase grating mask with static contrast between 0 and 0.6. Gratings were achromatic or isoluminant (R/G). Coarse achromatic gratings elicit VEPs of equal amplitude irrespective of the static contrast,...

Changes in colour appearance were studied under eight different illuminants. The most informative conditions were when sample and background were both contourless and isoluminant. Matching contourless, isoluminant colour samples under a variable illuminant against the standard (C) revealed variations of colour constancy and brightness independent o...

Patterns consisting of the sum of a sinusoidal grating and its second spatial harmonic have an apparent spatial fineness, or periodicity, that is about halfway between the two component spatial frequencies. There are also phase dependent modulations of the apparent fineness about the mean fineness shift. Covariance between individuals' phase depend...

It has been assumed that the visual system of primates has about eight spatial-frequency channels, covering a range from 0.25 to 30 cycles/deg, with a step of one octave. New electrophysiological studies of parvo and magno pathways with various tonic and phasic properties have made it possible to modernize the psychophysical models of the multichan...

Synopsis Perceptual Constancy examines a group of long-standing problems in the field of perception and provides a review of the fundamentals of the problems and their solutions. Experts in several different fields - including computational vision, physiology, neuropsychology, psychophysics and comparative psychology - present their approaches to o...

A modified Moreland anomaloscope was used to examine two subjects, one with dense macular pigment, the other with relatively light pigmentation. Chromatic visual evoked potentials (VEPs) were elicited from these two subjects using coarse, isoluminant gratings of different sizes. Colour-specificity was verified by comparing chromatic onset VEPs (ref...

The minimum distinct border (MDB) between different isoluminant hues of a bipartite field was set subjectively by adjustment and then according to a 3-point rating allowing determination of the S-cone specific (tritanopic) axis. This rating was compared with visual evoked potentials (VEPs) generated by coarse, isoluminant gratings, modulated along...

The purpose of this study was to optimise the testing paradigm for isolating the contributions of chromatic and achromatic mechanisms to the human spectral sensitivity function. Spectral sensitivity was determined for a test spot size of 1.2 deg presented with various spatial and temporal masks on a large, 10 deg background field of moderate intens...

The PERGs elicited by low contrast achromatic (luminance-modulated) and chromatic (isoluminant) gratings were studied as a function of the presentation mode (rapid onset, offset, reversal), departure from isoluminance, contrast and spatial frequency; predominantly phasic-type responses were found in all cases. We propose that the PERGs for low and...

The effects of colour categories on colour constancy were studied under two illuminants and two neutral grey backgrounds using Munsell chips and colour matching. It was found that the categorical colours: red, yellow, green and blue, which are processed by basic colour-opponent mechanisms, show relatively better colour constancy than intermediate c...

Threshold detection of most spectral lights presented on a white background is subserved by colour opponent mechanisms which produce distinct percepts of colours. Five ranges of wavelengths can be discriminated: red, yellow, green, blue and violet [Mullen and Kulikowski (1990) Wavelength discrimination at detection threshold. J. Opt. Soc. Am. A7, 7...

Anatomically distinct parvo and magno visual pathways show considerable functional overlap. However, specific stimulation of the most sensitive colour-opponent parvo-neurones is still possible, provided that colour stimuli are verified for selectivity. The authors have shown that gratings of low contrast, low spatial frequency and of restricted spa...

Most cells in the retino-geniculostriate pathway respond to both isoluminant, chromatically modulated and achromatic, luminance-modulated, stimuli. However, the separation of colour-related responses (psychophysical and near-threshold electrophysiological) is possible when the stimuli minimize luminance intrusions caused by chromatic aberration and...

A paper by Rabin et al. (1994) Vision Research, 34, 2657-2671, claimed that spatially extensive grating stimuli could be used to generate chromatic-specific visual evoked potentials from subjects assumed to have standard spectral sensitivity and tritanopic confusion lines. Here we demonstrate that such spatially extensive stimuli may generate respo...

Colour constancy is a multi-stage process whose receptoral and post-receptoral components have been separated by electrophysiological and behavioral studies. A psychophysical study was conducted to determine contributions of the visual processing stage which extracts information about colour categories, and to relate the results to the spectral sen...

Occipital visual evoked potentials (VEPs) were recorded in response to low-contrast, low spatial-frequency chromatic, and achromatic gratings. Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) and time-domain analysis were used to reveal differences in harmonic content and amplitude of chromatic and achromatic response components over a wide range of temporal frequenci...

Purpose. Although colour information is carried only by a subdivision of the parvocellular stream, chromatic isoluminant stimuli may activate the achromatic system. The magnocellular system responds to isoluminant red/green patterns, whereas blue/yellow stimuli, seemingly isoluminant, may produce luminance-contrast intrusions due to variability of...

The blue/yellow colour opponent system was selectively stimulated by a blue/yellow isoluminant coarse grating with hues corresponding to a tritanopic confusion line; chromatic aberration was eliminated using a system which focused different wavelengths on one plane (Mullen, 1985), thus avoiding luminance intrusions. Under such conditions the spatio...

Fundamentally different colour vision deficiencies result from the damage to retinal and cortical stages of colour processing. Damage to colour-opponent retinal units, at the ganglion cells or optic nerve fibres, abolishes all aspects of colour vision. Conversely, cortical lesions of primate visual area V4 affect only one aspect of colour vision, n...

Monkeys with lesions of visual area V4 have deficits in colour constancy, but are able to discriminate hues and segment the spectrum in a categorical manner. To investigate the nature of the processing mechanisms subserving the spared functions we recorded occipital visual evoked potentials (VEPs) of normal monkeys and monkeys with bilateral lesion...

Monkeys with lesions of cortical visual area V4 were compared with unoperated monkeys in three experiments. In Expt. 1 they were tested for the reacquisition of a pre-operatively learned hue discrimination task. In Expt. 2, as a test of colour constancy, the monkeys were required to perform previously overlearned colour discrimination tasks when th...

This chapter discusses electrophysiologically the basis of color vision, and show that cortical visual evoked potentials (VEPs) correlate with the known spatio-temporal limits of color vision. First, the extent of overlap of the spatio-temporal properties of achromatic and chromatic-opponent cells is discussed. Second, an assessment of the relation...

Monkeys with V4 lesions and unoperated controls were tested behaviourally for their perception of the colour categories red, green, blue and yellow. As expected, the monkeys with V4 lesions took longer to acquire the colour discriminations. However, the pattern of learning was the same in the two groups of animals. Both the lesioned and the control...

Monkeys with bilateral ablation of cortical visual area V4 were compared with unoperated controls for their ability to relearn postoperatively a series of preoperatively acquired two-choice visual discrimination problems. The animals with V4 lesions were impaired on relearning to discriminate between different shapes, and discrimination between ide...

Depth perception is known to be impaired for chromatic equiluminant patterns. To investigate this phenomenon I have compared the effects of binocularly presented stimuli in the form of stripes, which contain only luminance information with similarly presented stimuli which contain only chromatic information. Observations of the reported percepts fo...

Chromatic and achromatic visual function were investigated using psychophysical and evoked potential techniques in 32 patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) or optic neuritis. There was no evidence for either chromatic or achromatic vision being selectively damaged. There was, however, some evidence that demyelination of the optic nerve causes a vis...

The effect of partial and near total lesions of visual cortical area V4 in primates was studied and the selective deficits induced were monitored over a period of several years. The lesions primarily affected colour constancy and did not affect simple hue or object discrimination. A severe relearning difficulty was found for simple hue discriminati...

Contrast, but not brightness, of different stationary patterns can be cross matched and their values are directly proportional to each other. The perception of high contrast is much less dependent on stimulus parameters than near threshold levels of contrast: this effective contrast constancy can be approximated by subtracting contrast thresholds f...

Chromatic and achromatic visual function were investigated using psychophysical and evoked potential techniques in 32 patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) or optic neuritis. There was no evidence for either chromatic or achromatic vision being selectively damaged. There was, however, some evidence that demyelination of the optic nerve causes a vis...