Visual Evoked Potential Measures of Blur Adaptation

Abstract

It has been shown previously that blur adaptation occurs when subjects view a blurry image with both eyes for a significant period of time (Webster, Georgeson, & Webster, 2002). There has been no quantitative data taken on the phenomenon of blur adaptation. This study aimed to study various blur effects through the measurement of the visual evoked potential (VEP). VEP measurements were taken over time as subjects were exposed to a reversing sine-wave grating both with blur and with blur adaptation. The VEP measurement gave insight about the visual acuity, which can be used to interpret the behavior of the eyes and brain in adaption. The results reveal that there is a clear increase in the response amplitude and decrease in the latency of the VEP in response to blurred images after prior adaptation to the blur but not without prior adaptation to the blur.