Perceptual fading of an artificial scotoma can be viewed as a failure of figure–ground segregation, providing a useful tool for investigating possible mechanisms and processes involved in figure–ground perception. Weisstein’s antagonistic magnocellular/parvocellular stream figure–ground model proposes P stream activity encodes figure, and M stream activity encodes background. Where a boundary separates two regions, the region that is perceived as figure or ground is determined by the outcome of antagonism between M and P activity within each region and across the boundary between them. The region with the relatively stronger P “figure signal” is perceived as figure, and the region with the relatively stronger M “ground signal” is perceived as ground. From this perspective, fading occurs when the figure signal is overwhelmed by the ground signal. Strengthening the figure signal or weakening the ground signal should make the figure more resistant to fading. Based on research showing that red light suppresses M activity and short wavelength sensitive S-cones provide minimal input to M cells, we used red and blue light to reduce M activity in both figure and ground. The time to fade from stimulus onset until the figure completely disappeared was measured. Every combination of gray, green, red, and blue as figure and/or ground was tested. Compared with gray and green light, fade times were greatest when red or blue light either strengthened the figure signal by reducing M activity in the figure, or weakened the ground signal by reducing M activity in ground. The results support a dynamic antagonistic relationship between M and P activity contributing to figure–ground perception as envisioned in Weisstein’s model.

人工刻痕的可感知衰落可以看作是图形-地面分离的失败，为调查图形-地面感知中可能的机制和过程提供了有用的工具。Weisstein的对立的大细胞/小细胞流图-地面模型提出P流活动编码人形，M流活动编码背景。在边界将两个区域分开的情况下，被视为图形或地面的区域由每个区域内以及跨它们之间边界的M和P活动之间的对抗结果决定。P相对较强的“数字信号”的区域被视为图形，而M相对较强的“接地信号”的区域被视为接地。从这个角度来看，当数字信号被地面信号淹没时，就会发生衰落。增强数字信号或减弱接地信号应使数字更耐褪色。根据研究表明红光会抑制M活性，而短波敏感的S-锥对M细胞的输入最少，我们使用红光和蓝光来减少人物和地面的M活性。测量从刺激开始到图形完全消失的时间。测试了灰色，绿色，红色和蓝色作为图形和/或地面的每种组合。与灰色和绿色光相比，当红色或蓝色光通过降低图形中的M活性来增强图形信号或通过降低地面中的M活性来减弱地面信号时，衰落时间最大。