Perceived luminance depends on temporal context

Brightness--the perception of an object's luminance--arises from complex and poorly understood interactions at several levels of processing. It is well known that the brightness of an object depends on its spatial context, which can include perceptual organization, scene interpretation, three-dimensional interpretation, shadows, and other high-level percepts. Here we present a new class of illusion in which temporal relations with spatially neighbouring objects can modulate a target object's brightness. When compared with a nearby patch of constant luminance, a brief flash appears brighter with increasing onset asynchrony. Simultaneous contrast, retinal effects, masking, apparent motion and attentional effects cannot account for this illusory enhancement of brightness. This temporal context effect indicates that two parallel streams--one adapting and one non-adapting--encode brightness in the visual cortex.