Lateral suppression of mesopic rod and cone flicker detection.

This study investigated the mechanisms of flicker detection suppression by measuring mesopic rod and cone critical flicker frequencies (CFFs) at different center and surround illuminance levels. Stimuli were generated with a four-primary photostimulator that provided independent control of rod and cone excitations. The results showed that dim surrounds ≤0.2 Td suppressed cone-mediated CFFs at ≥20 Td but not rod-mediated CFFs. These results can be understood in terms of peak amplitudes of photoreceptor impulse response functions under different stimulation conditions.