Human vision limits as foundation of visual sensation

The dynamic range of light intensity in real world scenes is usually much wider than computer display or printed renditions. This is a well-known fact for the scientists that study the behavior of our vision system. Investigating the limits of dynamic range perception, we have found a severe decrease in dynamic range of the visual signal from the scene to the retina, due to the inter-ocular glare. Despite this fact, the perceived range in the experiment is relatively high and the edges are preserved. Classic illusory visual configurations, like simultaneous contrast, originate a visual sensation that goes in the opposite direction of magnitude than the effect of visual glare. Thus, to go from the decrease of visual signal due to glare, to the change in visual sensation from identical stimuli due to the surround, a spatial mechanism operated by our brain takes place. This spatial process explains the differences between visual stimuli and the deriving visual sensation and can be regarded as a founding mechanism of the more complex process of vision