Disappearance of stationary visual phantoms under high luminant or equiluminant inducing gratings

The visibility of stationary phantoms was measured by human observers in two experiments. The phantom visibility declined with the increase of the mean luminance of black/white inducing gratings, falling near to zero at a mean luminance high above 80 cd/m². The phantoms also disappeared when the red/green inducing gratings were subjectively equiluminant. The implications of these results are discussed in relation to the grating induction effect and to the functional correlations with the magnocellular system's activity.