The binocular fusion of two center-surround configurations, where one center is brighter, the other darker than the common surround, leads to a strong impression of luster in the central patch. Without reversed contrast polarities of the center patches, this impression is much weaker or even absent. However, we observed that in the latter case the perceived luster can be considerably enhanced by enclosing both centers with a thin ring of fixed luminance. Compared to the standard stimulus, this center-ring-surround configuration shows much less binocular rivalry and the luster has also a different, more glass-like material quality. In a psychophysical experiment, we examined how the magnitude of the lustrous response depends on the width of the ring, both in stimuli with reversed and consistent contrast polarities. It has been proposed that binocular luster results from a neuronal conflict between ON and OFF visual pathways. To test this hypothesis with respect to our data, we developed a simple model to estimate the amount of interocular conflict resulting from a given binocular stimulus pair and applied it to all stimuli used in the experiment. We found strong correlations between the interocular conflict measure and the strength of luster observed in the experiment, suggesting that a common low-level mechanism determines the magnitude of the lustrous response. Regarding the differences in the perceived material quality of the lustrous impressions, we discuss evidence indicating that high-level processes are involved that promote the visual system’s interpretation of the ring-stimuli as a certain depth-segmented 3D scene.

两个中心-环绕配置的双目融合，其中一个中心比普通环绕更亮，另一个比普通环绕更暗，导致在中央斑块中产生强烈的光泽印象。如果中心色块没有相反的对比极性，这种印象就会弱得多甚至不存在。然而，我们观察到，在后一种情况下，通过用固定亮度的细环包围两个中心，可以显着增强感知的光泽。与标准刺激相比，这种中心环环绕配置显示出更少的双眼竞争，并且光泽也具有不同的、更像玻璃的材料质量。在心理物理学实验中，我们研究了光泽反应的大小如何取决于环的宽度，无论是在具有相反和一致对比极性的刺激中。已经提出双眼光泽是由 ON 和 OFF 视觉通路之间的神经元冲突引起的。为了根据我们的数据测试这一假设，我们开发了一个简单的模型来估计由给定双眼刺激对引起的眼间冲突量，并将其应用于实验中使用的所有刺激。我们发现眼间冲突测量与实验中观察到的光泽强度之间存在很强的相关性，这表明一个共同的低水平机制决定了光泽反应的大小。关于光泽印象的感知材料质量的差异，我们讨论了表明涉及高级过程的证据，这些过程促进了视觉系统将环刺激解释为某个深度分割的 3D 场景。