Temporal and spatial summation in the human rod visual system.

1. Absolute and increment thresholds were measured in a retinal region 12 deg temporal from the fovea with 520 nm targets of varying size and duration. Measurements were made under rod-isolation conditions in two normal observers and in a typical, complete achromat observer who has no cone-mediated vision. The purpose of these experiments was to determine how the temporal and spatial summation of rod-mediated vision changes with light adaptation. 2. The absolute threshold and the rise in increment threshold with background intensity depend upon target size and duration, but the psychophysically estimated dark light of the eye (the hypothetical light assumed to be equivalent to photoreceptor noise) does not. 3. The rise in increment threshold for tiny (10 min of arc), brief (10 ms) targets approaches the de Vries-Rose square-root law, varying according to the quantal fluctuations of the background light. The slope of the rod increment threshold versus background intensity (TVI) curves in logarithmic co-ordinates is about 0.56 +/- 0.04 (when cones are not influencing rod field adaptation). For large (6 deg) and long (200 ms) targets, a maximum slope of about 0.77 +/- 0.03 is attained. 4. The steeper slopes of the rod-detected TVI curves for large, long targets implies some reduction in temporal or spatial summation. In fact, the change in summation area is much more critical: under conditions where only the rod system is active the TVI curve slope is independent of target duration, suggesting that temporal summation is practically independent of background intensity. 5. The rise in threshold also depends on the wavelength of the background field in the normal observer but not in the achromat, confirming reports that the field adaptation of the rods is not independent of the quantal absorptions in the cones. The cone influence is most conspicuous on long-wavelength backgrounds and is found for all target sizes and durations, but is greater for large and long targets than for the other conditions.