2005 年 24 巻 1 号 p. 56-62
Visual psychophysics is a research strategy that analyzes the visual system from behavioral responses to visual stimuli. Although it may look outdated in comparison with the other advanced neuroscience methodologies, psychophysics can make important contributions to current visual neuroscience in many ways. First, in other neuroscience studies including brain imaging, one can use various techniques developed in psychophysics. Second, psychophysical responses can be used as target measures that should be predicted in terms of neural activities. Third, psychophysics can estimate certain aspects of anatomical structures of visual processing. Fourth, psychophysics is a powerful technique to estimate functional structures of visual processing independently of other neuroscience studies. Fifth, psychophysics is the only scientific method to analyze subjective visual world, the way of which is represented in neural mechanism still remains a mystery. Finally, psychophysics can lead visual science by initiating studies on new visual functions.