EVIDENCE THAT McILWAIN'S PERIPHERY EFFECT IS NOT A STRAY LIGHT ARTIFACT

Abstract

The excitability of a cat retinal ganglion cell may be increased by stimuli applied in the visual field up to 40 away from the receptive field. This could be caused by stray light scattered onto the receptive field. However, an explanation based upon stray light was ruled out by observations on the form of the response, the effectiveness of patterned targets and the behavior of the phenomenon during differential adaptation of the receptive field and surrounding retina respectively to bright and dim lights.