Perceptual filling-in of blind-spot for surrounding color gradient stimuli

Abstract

Perceptual filling-in of blind-spot is still a mystic brain mechanism for which a great deal of research work is still going on using psychophysical and computational techniques. We conduct psychophysical experiments with a large number of stimuli to examine a retinotopic rule recently proposed by a group of researchers based on Cortical Magnification Factor (CMF). In our experiment we come across a phenomenon which could not be explained by the above mentioned retinotopic rule. So, we propose a new hypothesis for blind-spot filling-in for non-homogeneous surroundings. Our hypothesis encircles the importance of Trichromatic theory, Information theory and CMF in blind-spot filling-in mechanism. We also observe that two kinds of illusions namely Simultaneous Brightness Contrast (SBC) and Brightness Assimilation (BA), till now thought of as antagonistic with respect to brightness induction, are significantly similar and it bears analogy with the blind-spot filling-in mechanism. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2018.