SPATIAL CONTRAST SENSITIVITY IN ALBINO AND PIGMENTED RATS

Spatial contrast sensitivity functions were measured for hooded and albino rats in behavioral tasks in which the animals were required to discriminate sinusoidal luminance gratings from homogeneous fields of the same average luminance. The maximal spatial resolution for the hooded rat was 1.2 c/deg. while that for the albino rats was 0.34 to 0.43 c/deg. The contrast sensitivity functions for the rat show no falloff in sensitivity at low (down to 0.12 c/deg) spatial frequencies. Measurements made at several different luminance levels indicate that threshold spatial acuity for the hooded rat changes very little over a five log unit range in luminance. © 1979.