Cortical visual processing is temporally dispersed by luminance in human subjects.

Increasing the intensity of a stimulus such as luminance results in faster processing of the signal and therefore decreases simple motor reaction time (RT). We studied the latencies of visual evoked potentials (VEPs, N80, P100, N130) and RTs in eight subjects to flashing spots of light while varying the luminance of the spots from 1 to 1000 cd/m2. The data show that processing time as a function of intensity is modified not only at the retina but also at later processing sites. This indicates a temporal dispersion of the visual signal over the whole processing stream from visual input all the way to motor output.