Perceiving polarization with the naked eye: characterization of human polarization sensitivity

Like many animals, humans are sensitive to the polarization of light. We can detect the angle of polarization using an entoptic phenomenon called Haidinger's brushes, which is mediated by dichroic carotenoids in the macula lutea. While previous studies have characterized the spectral sensitivit...

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Main Authors:	Temple, Shelby E., McGregor, Juliette E., Miles, Camilla, Graham, Laura, Miller, Josie, Buck, Jordan, Scott-Samuel, Nicholas E., Roberts, Nicholas W.
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	The Royal Society 2015
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4528539/

id	pubmed-4528539
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-45285392015-08-11 Perceiving polarization with the naked eye: characterization of human polarization sensitivity Temple, Shelby E. McGregor, Juliette E. Miles, Camilla Graham, Laura Miller, Josie Buck, Jordan Scott-Samuel, Nicholas E. Roberts, Nicholas W. Research Articles Like many animals, humans are sensitive to the polarization of light. We can detect the angle of polarization using an entoptic phenomenon called Haidinger's brushes, which is mediated by dichroic carotenoids in the macula lutea. While previous studies have characterized the spectral sensitivity of Haidinger's brushes, other aspects remain unexplored. We developed a novel methodology for presenting gratings in polarization-only contrast at varying degrees of polarization in order to measure the lower limits of human polarized light detection. Participants were, on average, able to perform the task down to a threshold of 56%, with some able to go as low as 23%. This makes humans the most sensitive vertebrate tested to date. Additionally, we quantified a nonlinear relationship between presented and perceived polarization angle when an observer is presented with a rotatable polarized light field. This result confirms a previous theoretical prediction of how uniaxial corneal birefringence impacts the perception of Haidinger's brushes. The rotational dynamics of Haidinger's brushes were then used to calculate corneal retardance. We suggest that psychophysical experiments, based upon the perception of polarized light, are amenable to the production of affordable technologies for self-assessment and longitudinal monitoring of visual dysfunctions such as age-related macular degeneration. The Royal Society 2015-07-22 /pmc/articles/PMC4528539/ /pubmed/26136441 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2015.0338 Text en http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ © 2015 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Temple, Shelby E. McGregor, Juliette E. Miles, Camilla Graham, Laura Miller, Josie Buck, Jordan Scott-Samuel, Nicholas E. Roberts, Nicholas W.
spellingShingle	Temple, Shelby E. McGregor, Juliette E. Miles, Camilla Graham, Laura Miller, Josie Buck, Jordan Scott-Samuel, Nicholas E. Roberts, Nicholas W. Perceiving polarization with the naked eye: characterization of human polarization sensitivity
author_facet	Temple, Shelby E. McGregor, Juliette E. Miles, Camilla Graham, Laura Miller, Josie Buck, Jordan Scott-Samuel, Nicholas E. Roberts, Nicholas W.
author_sort	Temple, Shelby E.
title	Perceiving polarization with the naked eye: characterization of human polarization sensitivity
title_short	Perceiving polarization with the naked eye: characterization of human polarization sensitivity
title_full	Perceiving polarization with the naked eye: characterization of human polarization sensitivity
title_fullStr	Perceiving polarization with the naked eye: characterization of human polarization sensitivity
title_full_unstemmed	Perceiving polarization with the naked eye: characterization of human polarization sensitivity
title_sort	perceiving polarization with the naked eye: characterization of human polarization sensitivity
description	Like many animals, humans are sensitive to the polarization of light. We can detect the angle of polarization using an entoptic phenomenon called Haidinger's brushes, which is mediated by dichroic carotenoids in the macula lutea. While previous studies have characterized the spectral sensitivity of Haidinger's brushes, other aspects remain unexplored. We developed a novel methodology for presenting gratings in polarization-only contrast at varying degrees of polarization in order to measure the lower limits of human polarized light detection. Participants were, on average, able to perform the task down to a threshold of 56%, with some able to go as low as 23%. This makes humans the most sensitive vertebrate tested to date. Additionally, we quantified a nonlinear relationship between presented and perceived polarization angle when an observer is presented with a rotatable polarized light field. This result confirms a previous theoretical prediction of how uniaxial corneal birefringence impacts the perception of Haidinger's brushes. The rotational dynamics of Haidinger's brushes were then used to calculate corneal retardance. We suggest that psychophysical experiments, based upon the perception of polarized light, are amenable to the production of affordable technologies for self-assessment and longitudinal monitoring of visual dysfunctions such as age-related macular degeneration.
publisher	The Royal Society
publishDate	2015
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4528539/
_version_	1613256900369973248

Perceiving polarization with the naked eye: characterization of human polarization sensitivity

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