Release from inhibition reveals the visual past [7]

Abstract

Prolonged viewing of a high-contrast repetitive pattern such as a grating leads to adaptation of the corresponding visual-processing channels1. We have found that such viewing also leads to the short-term establishment of a subthreshold trace in the brain that can cause a visual illusion of the pattern during rebound from the cross-orientation inhibition2,3,4 that is induced by viewing moving patterns with an orthogonal orientation.