Skip to main content
Advertisement

Main menu

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Accepted manuscripts
    • Issue in progress
    • Latest complete issue
    • Issue archive
    • Archive by article type
    • Interviews
    • Sign up for alerts
  • About us
    • About BiO
    • Editors and Board
    • Editor biographies
    • Grants and funding
    • Journal Meetings
    • Workshops
    • The Company of Biologists
    • Journal news
  • For authors
    • Submit a manuscript
    • Aims and scope
    • Presubmission enquiries
    • Article types
    • Manuscript preparation
    • Cover suggestions
    • Editorial process
    • Promoting your paper
    • Open Access
  • Journal info
    • Journal policies
    • Rights and permissions
    • Media policies
    • Reviewer guide
    • Sign up for alerts
  • Contact
    • Contact BiO
    • Advertising
    • Feedback
  • COB
    • About The Company of Biologists
    • Development
    • Journal of Cell Science
    • Journal of Experimental Biology
    • Disease Models & Mechanisms
    • Biology Open

User menu

  • Log in

Search

  • Advanced search
Biology Open
  • COB
    • About The Company of Biologists
    • Development
    • Journal of Cell Science
    • Journal of Experimental Biology
    • Disease Models & Mechanisms
    • Biology Open

supporting biologistsinspiring biology

Biology Open

Advanced search

RSS   Twitter   Facebook   YouTube

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Accepted manuscripts
    • Issue in progress
    • Latest complete issue
    • Issue archive
    • Archive by article type
    • Interviews
    • Sign up for alerts
  • About us
    • About BiO
    • Editors and Board
    • Editor biographies
    • Grants and funding
    • Journal Meetings
    • Workshops
    • The Company of Biologists
    • Journal news
  • For authors
    • Submit a manuscript
    • Aims and scope
    • Presubmission enquiries
    • Article types
    • Manuscript preparation
    • Cover suggestions
    • Editorial process
    • Promoting your paper
    • Open Access
  • Journal info
    • Journal policies
    • Rights and permissions
    • Media policies
    • Reviewer guide
    • Sign up for alerts
  • Contact
    • Contact BiO
    • Advertising
    • Feedback
Research Article
Contrast thresholds reveal different visual masking functions in humans and praying mantises
Ghaith Tarawneh, Vivek Nityananda, Ronny Rosner, Steven Errington, William Herbert, Sandra Arranz-Paraíso, Natalie Busby, Jimmy Tampin, Jenny Read, Ignacio Serrano-Pedraza
Biology Open 2018 7: bio029439 doi: 10.1242/bio.029439 Published 26 April 2018
Ghaith Tarawneh
1Institute of Neuroscience, Henry Wellcome Building for Neuroecology, Newcastle University, Framlington Place, Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE2 4HH, UK
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Ghaith Tarawneh
  • For correspondence: ghaith.tarawneh@ncl.ac.uk
Vivek Nityananda
1Institute of Neuroscience, Henry Wellcome Building for Neuroecology, Newcastle University, Framlington Place, Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE2 4HH, UK
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Vivek Nityananda
Ronny Rosner
1Institute of Neuroscience, Henry Wellcome Building for Neuroecology, Newcastle University, Framlington Place, Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE2 4HH, UK
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Ronny Rosner
Steven Errington
1Institute of Neuroscience, Henry Wellcome Building for Neuroecology, Newcastle University, Framlington Place, Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE2 4HH, UK
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Steven Errington
William Herbert
1Institute of Neuroscience, Henry Wellcome Building for Neuroecology, Newcastle University, Framlington Place, Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE2 4HH, UK
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Sandra Arranz-Paraíso
2Faculty of Psychology, Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid 28223, Spain
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Natalie Busby
1Institute of Neuroscience, Henry Wellcome Building for Neuroecology, Newcastle University, Framlington Place, Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE2 4HH, UK
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Jimmy Tampin
1Institute of Neuroscience, Henry Wellcome Building for Neuroecology, Newcastle University, Framlington Place, Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE2 4HH, UK
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Jenny Read
1Institute of Neuroscience, Henry Wellcome Building for Neuroecology, Newcastle University, Framlington Place, Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE2 4HH, UK
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Jenny Read
Ignacio Serrano-Pedraza
2Faculty of Psychology, Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid 28223, Spain
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Ignacio Serrano-Pedraza
  • Article
  • Figures & tables
  • Info & metrics
  • eLetters
  • PDF
Loading

Article Figures & Tables

Figures

  • Fig. 1.
    • Download figure
    • Open in new tab
    • Download powerpoint
    Fig. 1.

    The Elementary Motion Detector (EMD). The spatial input from two identical Gaussian filters separated by Δx is passed through high and low pass temporal filters (HP and LP, respectively). The LP output in each subunit is cross-correlated with the HP output from the other subunit using a multiplication stage (M) and the two products are then subtracted to produce a direction-sensitive measure of motion.

  • Fig. 2.
    • Download figure
    • Open in new tab
    • Download powerpoint
    Fig. 2.

    Masked grating stimulus conditions used in Experiment H1. Each column represents one stimulus condition. Top row shows still frames of each condition, while middle and bottom rows show corresponding space-time plots and Fourier spatio-temporal amplitude spectra, respectively. In these plots, the signal contrast was set to 0.2. The cartoons at the top represent the conditions graphically and are used in subsequent figures for easy reference (signal is the upwards pointing arrow and noise is the coloured rectangle). The conditions are also labelled using the format Signal+Noise (S+N), where each of S and N is either H or L, indicating high and low spatial frequencies, respectively. For example, L+H indicates low frequency signal and high frequency noise.

  • Fig. 3.
    • Download figure
    • Open in new tab
    • Download powerpoint
    Fig. 3.

    Human motion detection contrast thresholds for different combinations of signal and noise frequencies (measured in Experiment H1). Bars show mean contrast detection thresholds (n=4) and error bars show ±s.e. of the mean. Horizontal brackets indicate threshold pairs that differ significantly (paired t-test, *P≤0.05 and **P≤0.01). Results show that each of the two signals frequencies 0.4 (blue) and 2 cpd (green) was masked significantly higher by same-frequency noise compared to different-frequency noise. Stimuli icons (below bars) and labels (above bars) use the notation introduced in Fig. 2.

  • Fig. 4.
    • Download figure
    • Open in new tab
    • Download powerpoint
    Fig. 4.

    Responses, fitted psychometric curves and detection thresholds of a single mantis (measured in Experiment M1). Circles show optomotor response rates (i.e. proportion of trials on which the mantis was coded as moving in the same direction as the signal grating) as a function of signal grating contrast. Error-bars are 95% confidence intervals calculated from simple binomial statistics. Red curves show fitted psychometric function (Eqn 4); red vertical lines mark contrast threshold. (A,C,E) Low-frequency signal (i.e. 0.04 cpd); (B,D,F) high-frequency signal (i.e. 0.2 cpd). Insets at the bottom right corner of each panel indicate signal and noise frequencies as in Fig. 2. (A,B) No noise: stimulus is a pure drifting luminance grating. (C,D) Low-frequency noise, i.e. added to the drifting signal grating is a grating of 0.04 cpd for which phase is updated randomly on every frame. (E,F) High-frequency noise. The data plotted in this figure are all from a single individual (mantis F11) and were measured in Experiment M1.

  • Fig. 5.
    • Download figure
    • Open in new tab
    • Download powerpoint
    Fig. 5.

    Mantis motion detection contrast thresholds for different combinations of signal and noise frequencies (measured in Experiment M1). Bars show mean contrast detection thresholds (n=6) and error bars show ±s.e. of the mean. Horizontal brackets indicate threshold pairs that differ significantly (paired t-test, *P≤0.05 and **P≤0.01). Stimuli icons (below bars) and labels (above bars) use the notation introduced in Fig. 2. Results show that the 0.2 cpd signal was masked to similar degrees by noise at either frequency, while the 0.04 cpd signal was masked more strongly by the 0.04 cpd noise.

  • Fig. 6.
    • Download figure
    • Open in new tab
    • Download powerpoint
    Fig. 6.

    Mantis motion detection contrast thresholds for different combinations of signal and noise frequencies (measured in Experiment M2). Bars show mean contrast detection thresholds (n=6) and error bars show ±s.e. of the mean. Horizontal brackets indicate threshold pairs that differ significantly (paired-sample t-test, *P≤0.05 and **P≤0.01). Stimuli icons (below bars) and labels (above bars) use the notation introduced in Fig. 2. The results show the same qualitative differences observed in Experiment M1 (Fig. 5): the 0.2 cpd signal is masked to similar degrees by noise at either frequency, while the 0.04 cpd signal is masked more strongly by 0.04 cpd noise. This similarity excludes the possibility that mantis and human results were different because stimuli appeared spatially distorted to mantises.

  • Fig. 7.
    • Download figure
    • Open in new tab
    • Download powerpoint
    Fig. 7.

    The spatial contrast sensitivity function of mantis optomotor response. The spatial frequencies used for signal and noise in experiments M1/M2 (0.04 and 0.2 cpd) are indicated on the plot using green/blue vertical lines. Contrast sensitivity data points are from Nityananda et al. (2015) and were corrected to adopt the same notation for converting between pixels and visual degrees as in Experiment M1 [i.e. averaging over screen width, instead of a single spatial period as in Nityananda et al. (2015)].

  • Fig. 8.
    • Download figure
    • Open in new tab
    • Download powerpoint
    Fig. 8.

    Masked grating stimulus conditions used in Experiment M2. Each column represents one stimulus condition. Top row shows still frames of each condition, while middle and bottom rows show corresponding space-time plots and Fourier spatio-temporal amplitude spectra, respectively. In these plots the signal contrast was set to 0.1. These stimuli conditions are similar to their correspondents in Experiment H1 (Fig. 2) but were modified in three ways: (1) they were limited to the central 85 degrees of the visual field, (2) they were corrected for spatial distortion by introducing a non-linear horizontal transformation, and (3) their noise was restricted to a single spatial frequency. Stimuli icons and labels (top row) use the notation introduced in Fig. 2.

Previous ArticleNext Article
Back to top
Previous ArticleNext Article

This Issue

RSSRSS

Keywords

  • Masking
  • Motion detection
  • Praying mantis
  • Reichardt detector
  • Visual noise

 Download PDF

Email

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word on Biology Open.

NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person you are recommending the page to knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture any email address.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Contrast thresholds reveal different visual masking functions in humans and praying mantises
(Your Name) has sent you a message from Biology Open
(Your Name) thought you would like to see the Biology Open web site.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Share
Research Article
Contrast thresholds reveal different visual masking functions in humans and praying mantises
Ghaith Tarawneh, Vivek Nityananda, Ronny Rosner, Steven Errington, William Herbert, Sandra Arranz-Paraíso, Natalie Busby, Jimmy Tampin, Jenny Read, Ignacio Serrano-Pedraza
Biology Open 2018 7: bio029439 doi: 10.1242/bio.029439 Published 26 April 2018
del.icio.us logo Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo CiteULike logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
Citation Tools
Research Article
Contrast thresholds reveal different visual masking functions in humans and praying mantises
Ghaith Tarawneh, Vivek Nityananda, Ronny Rosner, Steven Errington, William Herbert, Sandra Arranz-Paraíso, Natalie Busby, Jimmy Tampin, Jenny Read, Ignacio Serrano-Pedraza
Biology Open 2018 7: bio029439 doi: 10.1242/bio.029439 Published 26 April 2018

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
Alerts

Please log in to add an alert for this article.

Sign in to email alerts with your email address

Article Navigation

  • Top
  • Article
    • ABSTRACT
    • INTRODUCTION
    • RESULTS
    • DISCUSSION
    • MATERIALS AND METHODS
    • Acknowledgements
    • Footnotes
    • References
  • Figures & tables
  • Info & metrics
  • eLetters
  • PDF

Related articles

Cited by...

More in this TOC section

  • Local adaptation in thermal tolerance for a tropical butterfly across ecotone and rainforest habitats
  • Validating accelerometry-derived proxies of energy expenditure using the doubly labelled water method in the smallest penguin species
  • Three functional polymorphisms in CCDC170 were associated with osteoporosis phenotype
Show more RESEARCH ARTICLE

Similar articles

Other journals from The Company of Biologists

Development

Journal of Cell Science

Journal of Experimental Biology

Disease Models & Mechanisms

Advertisement

Biology Open and COVID-19

We are aware that the COVID-19 pandemic is having an unprecedented impact on researchers worldwide. The Editors of all The Company of Biologists’ journals have been considering ways in which we can alleviate concerns that members of our community may have around publishing activities during this time. Read about the actions we are taking at this time.

Please don’t hesitate to contact the Editorial Office if you have any questions or concerns.


Future Leader Review - Cardiac myosin super relaxation

A new Future Leader Review by Manuel Schmid and Christopher Toepfer discusses the rapidly-expanding field of myosin super relaxation in the context of cardiovascular disease. Read the full Review and their accompanying interview.

Find out more about our Future Leader Reviews – they are an exclusive opportunity for early-career researchers who want to establish themselves in their field.


An interview with Roberta Azzarelli

In an interview, first author Roberta Azzarelli discusses her 3D model of glioblastoma and shares her thoughts on how to improve the professional lives of early-career researchers: formal mentorship programmes, a clearly structured career path and taking part in initiatives such as the Node Network.


News from our sister journals

Development continues to run a successful new webinar series, Development presents…, while Journal of Cell Science has recently welcomed Esperanza Agullo-Pascual as FocalPlane’s new Community Manager. Journal of Experimental Biology’s new special issue highlights the role of comparative biology in tackling climate change and Liz Patton, the new Editor-in-Chief of Disease Models & Mechanisms, sets out her visions and priorities.

Articles

  • Accepted manuscripts
  • Issue in progress
  • Latest complete issue
  • Issue archive
  • Archive by article type
  • Interviews
  • Sign up for alerts

About us

  • About BiO
  • Editors and Board
  • Editor biographies
  • Grants and funding
  • Journal Meetings
  • Workshops
  • The Company of Biologists

For Authors

  • Submit a manuscript
  • Aims and scope
  • Presubmission enquiries
  • Article types
  • Manuscript preparation
  • Cover suggestions
  • Editorial process
  • Promoting your paper
  • Open Access

Journal Info

  • Journal policies
  • Rights and permissions
  • Media policies
  • Reviewer guide
  • Sign up for alerts

Contact

  • Contact BiO
  • Advertising
  • Feedback

Twitter   YouTube   LinkedIn

© 2021   The Company of Biologists Ltd   Registered Charity 277992