Webster Michael A
Department of Psychology, University of Nevada, Reno, Reno NV 89557 USA.
Annu Rev Vis Sci. 2015 Nov 1;1:547-567. doi: 10.1146/annurev-vision-082114-035509. Epub 2015 Oct 22.
Sensory systems continuously mold themselves to the widely varying contexts in which they must operate. Studies of these adaptations have played a long and central role in vision science. In part this is because the specific adaptations remain a powerful tool for dissecting vision, by exposing the mechanisms that are adapting. That is, "if it adapts, it's there." Many insights about vision have come from using adaptation in this way, as a method. A second important trend has been the realization that the processes of adaptation are themselves essential to how vision works, and thus are likely to operate at all levels. That is, "if it's there, it adapts." This has focused interest on the mechanisms of adaptation as the target rather than the probe. Together both approaches have led to an emerging insight of adaptation as a fundamental and ubiquitous coding strategy impacting all aspects of how we see.
感觉系统会不断地根据其必须运行的广泛多样的环境来塑造自身。对这些适应性的研究在视觉科学中一直扮演着长期且核心的角色。部分原因在于，特定的适应性通过揭示正在发生适应的机制，仍然是剖析视觉的有力工具。也就是说，“如果它会适应，那它就在那里。”关于视觉的许多见解都来自于以这种方式将适应作为一种方法来使用。第二个重要趋势是认识到适应过程本身对于视觉的工作方式至关重要，因此可能在各个层面上都发挥作用。也就是说，“如果它在那里，它就会适应。”这使得人们将兴趣集中在适应机制上，将其作为目标而非探测手段。这两种方法共同促成了一种新的见解，即适应是一种影响我们视觉各个方面的基本且普遍存在的编码策略。
