Dataset Information

The limited capacity of visual temporal integration in cats.

ABSTRACT: It has been long known that prolonging stimulus duration may increase the perceived brightness of a visual stimulus. The interaction between intensity and duration generally follows a rule, such as that described in Bloch's law. This visual temporal integration relationship has been identified in human subjects and in non-human primates. However, although auditory temporal integration has been extensively studied in the cat, visual temporal integration has not. Therefore, the goal of this study was to examine visual temporal integration in the cat. We trained five cats to respond when a brief luminance change was detected in a fixation dot. After training, we measured the success rate of detecting the luminance change with varying durations at threshold, subthreshold, and suprathreshold luminance levels. Psychometric functions showed that prolonging stimulus duration improved task performance, more noticeably for stimuli below 100 ms than beyond. Most psychometric functions were better fit to an exponential model than to a linear model. The gradually saturated performance observed here, as in previous studies, can be explained by the "leaky integrator" hypothesis, that is, temporal integration is only valid below a critical duration. Overall, we developed a task whereby visual temporal integration was successfully demonstrated in the cat. The effect of stimulus duration on detection success rate displayed a pattern generally consistent with previous human and non-human primate findings on visual temporal integration.

SUBMITTER: Bao X

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7453054 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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The limited capacity of visual temporal integration in cats.

Bao Xiaohan X Salloum Anas A Gordon Stephen G SG Lomber Stephen G SG

Journal of vision 20200801 8

It has been long known that prolonging stimulus duration may increase the perceived brightness of a visual stimulus. The interaction between intensity and duration generally follows a rule, such as that described in Bloch's law. This visual temporal integration relationship has been identified in human subjects and in non-human primates. However, although auditory temporal integration has been extensively studied in the cat, visual temporal integration has not. Therefore, the goal of this study ...[more]

PMID: 32852533

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Project description:Adults combine information from different sensory modalities to estimate object properties such as size or location. This process is optimal in that (i) sensory information is weighted according to relative reliability: more reliable estimates have more influence on the combined estimate and (ii) the combined estimate is more reliable than the component uni-modal estimates. Previous studies suggest that optimal sensory integration does not emerge until around 10 years of age. Younger children rely on a single modality or combine information using inappropriate sensory weights. Children aged 4-11 and adults completed a simple audio-visual task in which they reported either the number of beeps or the number of flashes in uni-modal and bi-modal conditions. In bi-modal trials, beeps and flashes differed in number by 0, 1 or 2. Mutual interactions between the sensory signals were evident at all ages: the reported number of flashes was influenced by the number of simultaneously presented beeps and vice versa. Furthermore, for all ages, the relative strength of these interactions was predicted by the relative reliabilities of the two modalities, in other words, all observers weighted the signals appropriately. The degree of cross-modal interaction decreased with age: the youngest observers could not ignore the task-irrelevant modality-they fully combined vision and audition such that they perceived equal numbers of flashes and beeps for bi-modal stimuli. Older observers showed much smaller effects of the task-irrelevant modality. Do these interactions reflect optimal integration? Full or partial cross-modal integration predicts improved reliability in bi-modal conditions. In contrast, switching between modalities reduces reliability. Model comparison suggests that older observers employed partial integration, whereas younger observers (up to around 8 years) did not integrate, but followed a sub-optimal switching strategy, responding according to either visual or auditory information on each trial.

Dataset Information

The limited capacity of visual temporal integration in cats.

Publications

The limited capacity of visual temporal integration in cats.

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