Luminance-contrast evoked responses and color-contrast evoked responses in the human electroretinogram.

Pattern electroretinograms to onset-offset stimuli were studied in response to luminance-contrast (e.g. red-black or green-black) and color-contrast (e.g. red-green) stripe patterns of equal luminance. Onset responses to color-contrast patterns show no spatial selectivity and a constant peak latency at all spatial frequencies, a behavior different from that of luminance-contrast evoked responses (spatial selectivity and increasing peak latency with spatial frequency). These results are tentatively related to the physiology of tonic and phasic primate retinal ganglion cells and to the spatially selective and non-selective human contrast sensitivity to respectively luminance-contrast and color-contrast gratings.