Acuity

The smallest receptive field size, for the central region, ought to be related to acuity or the smallest object we can resolve.  Below I have graphed a small white stimulus about 2 receptors wide.  In the fovea, which I am trying to model, the receptors are about 30 arc-seconds wide so two receptors is about 1 arc-minute which is about our acuity.  Thus this stimulus should be resolvable at the highest contrast.  One question implied by playing with the parameters of the model is what pattern of activity across the cells leads to a resolvable response in perception?  In most cases so far the differences are obvious and easy to see, but here we come up against limits where the connection of model to behavioral data is more murky.

Another interesting and related question is that of hyperacuities.