Dynamic behavior of the visual tract

Abstract

Using a technique whose development was begun in a previous investigation, Transient Frequency Response (TFR) functions for the functional segment of the visual tract between the structures which produce the ERG and those which produce the VER were obtained using rabbits as an experimental subject. The technique uses a light flash to perturb the system and considers the resultant ERG as the system input and the VER as the system output. A Fast Fourier Transform algorithm is used to transform the biopotential signals to the frequency domain. The results are presented in Bode plot form. There were two phases to the experiments: a luminance phase and a color phase. In the luminance phase, TFR functions were obtained for each subject at four different dark and light adaption levels and three different flash intensities, or 12 combinations of background and flash conditions. In the color phase, TFR functions were obtained for each subject for four background and four flash colors, or 16 combinations of background and flash color conditions. Three subjects were used and the experiments were repeated four times. The TFR function Bode plots were constructed from the means and standard deviations estimated from the four repetitions..