Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 2

by Unknown

In some of our experiments with dots we found that after a dot of the proper intensity of illumination had been steadily gazed at for some time the centre would appear dark. This seems to be due to the fact that the centre of such an image was reënforced by irradiation, so that the nervous mechanism corresponding to it became fatigued more quickly and the stimulation at the centre no longer gave such intense sensations as the rest of the figure, but appeared darker.

Passing to the fifth and last variety of irradiation, this seems due to fatigue in the inhibiting apparatus which reduced the spread of the first kind of irradiation. Following out the scheme we have applied, it would seem as if the channels which were first opened by the direct stimulation became blocked through fatigue, and, therefore, the excitation produced in the retina were forced to seek new paths through to the brain by means of the nerves which proceed from the unstimulated portions of the retina. Thus if the resistance through fatigue occurs slowly, the excitation which spreads may increase in intensity and in extent. So, as the resistance increased, a portion corresponding to the directly stimulated portion and its slight irradiatory enlargement of the borders would be surrounded by a cloud of light growing in size and intensity.

Of course the limiting case would be when the external cloud of light attained as great or even greater intensity as the stimulated portion, but such a case would probably be impossible to realize because of other conditions which would prevent.

It may be that this fifth variety is caused partly at least by a cortical spreading of the excitation. But it seems to me more likely, in view of the fact that we could find no irradiatory enlargement of the binocular portions of stereoscopic images and for a number of other reasons, that the induction is retinal in character and that after the resistance through fatigue has arisen in the central organs the stimulation spreads out over the retina to the unstimulated portions of the field and proceeds from thence to the brain. This seems more probable than that the stimulation continues to be confined merely to the stimulated portion of the retina, but seeks passage from one portion to another of the brain through fresh neurones which branch only from those nerve-tracts which proceed from the directly stimulated portions of the retina.

To conclude; we have seen that there are various forms of irradiation which take place during the perception of stationary and moving sources of illumination.

That there are certain modifications in the form of a moving image which are probably due to one of these processes.

Concerning color irradiation it was found that the curvature of the images varied with the color of the light, so that a figure illuminated by a colored light of one intensity would not have the same curvature as one illuminated by a light of the same intensity but of another color. Green gives the greatest curvature, yellow the next, red and blue about the same. In other words the differences in curvature of the images follow the order of the brightness of the colors in a spectrum the intensity of which is much reduced.

From a consideration of these phenomena we were led to discuss the functions of the rods and cones in the retina of the eye, and the suggestion was made that differences in color-vision were due to central rather than retinal processes, and that in many cases of partial or total color-blindness the retina would be found normal and the defect in vision due to a lesion in some more central structure.

The various forms of visual irradiation which have been described by a number of different writers we found to be all forms of one rather simple process. Resistance, removal of resistance upon further stimulation, and recurrence of resistance through fatigue in some part of the optic tract, together with the spreading of stimulation over the retina (probably through the molecular layers) from one afferent nerve to another are assumed as the minimal requirements which are sufficient to explain the five forms of irradiation which have been considered in this paper.