Cyclopean stimuli is a form of visual stimuli that is defined by binocular disparity alone.
It was named after the one-eyed Cyclops of Homer’s Odyssey by Bela Julesz. Julesz was a Hungarian radar engineer. He thought that stereopsis might help to discover hidden objects, this might be useful to find camouflaged objects. The important aspect of this research was that Julesz showed using random dot stereograms (RDSs) that disparity is sufficient for stereopsis, where Charles Wheatstone had only shown that binocular disparity was necessary for stereopsis. Ironically, the Cyclops would not have been able to see a cyclopean stimulus, because having only one eye, he would not have been able to perceive binocular depth cues such as binocular disparity.
Famous quotes containing the word stimuli:
“Unable to create a meaningful life for itself, the personality takes its own revenge: from the lower depths comes a regressive form of spontaneity: raw animality forms a counterpoise to the meaningless stimuli and the vicarious life to which the ordinary man is conditioned. Getting spiritual nourishment from this chaos of events, sensations, and devious interpretations is the equivalent of trying to pick through a garbage pile for food.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)