Chromostereopsis - Recent Research

Recent Research

While a lot of physiological mechanisms that cause chromostereopsis have been discovered and researched, there are still unanswered questions. For instance, many researchers believe that chromostereopsis is caused by combination of multiple factors. Because of this, some of the more recent research has attempted to investigate how the different luminescence of backgrounds and different luminescence of red and blue color affect the chromostereoptic effect.

Additionally, previous studies have taken a psychophysical approach to studying chromostereopsis in order to document it as a perceptual effect and observe its optic mechanisms. However, until recently, no studies had examined the neurophysiological basis of chromostereopsis.

The most recent neurophysiological study by Cauquil et al. describes V1 and V2 color-preferring cells as coding local image characteristics (such as binocular disparity) and surface properties of a 3D scene, respectively. The study conducted by Cauquil et al. indicates, based on electrode stimulation results, that both dorsal and ventral pathways in the brain are involved in chromostereoptic processing. This study also concluded that chromostereopsis starts in the early stages of visual cortical processing, first in the occipito-parietal region of the brain, followed by a second step in the right parietal area and temporal lobes. Additionally, activity was found to be greater in the right hemisphere, which is dominant for 3D cortical processing, indicating that chromostereopsis is a task-dependent, top-down effect. Overall, chromostereopsis involves cortical areas that underlie depth processing for both monocular and binocular cues.