Evidence for a generalized Laguerre transform of temporal events by the visual system.

It is generally assumed that the early visual processing is constituted by a set of filters operating in parallel. In this respect the visual system performs a transform, generating a code of the characteristics of the input signal. Recently, it has been suggested that the coding of the spatial characteristics by the visual system can be described by a Hermite transform (Martens, 1990a, b). It was also suggested that a three-dimensional Hermite transform can be used to code spatiotemporal events. In contrast to this latter suggestion, we argue that the coding of temporal events takes the form of a generalized Laguerre transform. We review psychophysical evidence supporting this hypothesis.