I am working on the area of visual perception of urban places, to be put more generically places as part of the environment. And what seems to be pertinent is that visual perception guides the behaviour for sure. But there needs specific research and validation in specific domains.  

Hey Anna!

Maybe I got your question wrong, but how would you define the visual receptive field outside the context of cells? E.g. if a stimulus is in the receptive field of cell or not can be determined by its activity, but what would be a behevioraly defined RF - assuming you do not make recordings.

Greetings, David

Have a look at:

Acta Ophthalmol Scand. 2006 Jun;84(3):357-62.

Visual field defects in prematurely born patients with white matter damage of immaturity: a multiple-case study.

Jacobson L1, Flodmark O, Martin L.

Author information

Abstract

PURPOSE: 

White matter damage of immaturity may affect visual, motor and cognitive functions. This multiple-case study presents standardized perimetry results in six teenagers and young adults born prematurely with visual dysfunction due to white matter damage of immaturity of pre- or perinatal origin.

METHODS: 

Six subjects, aged 13-25 years, born at a gestational age of 28-34 weeks, with white matter damage of immaturity documented by MRI, and optic disc appearances documented by fundus photography, were examined with manual and computerized quantitative perimetry.

RESULTS: 

All subjects had subnormal visual field (VF) function, although the depth and extension of the VF defects differed between subjects. The inferior VF function was more deviant than the superior in all cases. The concordance between the VF defects detected with the different techniques was good, although the static computerized techniques revealed slightly more abnormality.

CONCLUSION: 

White matter damage of immaturity may affect the VF. The lower VF is often more affected than the upper. The abnormalities can be demonstrated by both manual and computerized perimetry.

It may give you some insight.

The other author to look at is Frisen L.

Here is one of his papers.

Invest Ophthalmol. 1975 Jul;14(7):528-36.

Optical and neural resolution in peripheral vision.

Frisén L, Glansholm A.

Abstract

Visual acuity along the horizontal meridian in the peripheral field of vision was determined at a photopic level in two normal subjects. Two types of sinusoidally modulated, monochromatic test patterns of high contrast were used. One was produced directly on the retina by an interferometric technique. The other type was imaged on the retina by the dioptric apparatus of the eye; the resulting image suffered ordinary optical image degradation. The results from the interferometric acuity determinations represent maximal neural discrimination across the visual field. Acuity decreases monotonically toward the periphery, from about 45 cycles per degree in the fovea, to about 0.8 at 80 degrees of eccentricity in the temporal field. The decline is well described by a second-degree polynomial. Acuity for test patterns imaged by the optics of the eye was consistently lower than interferometric acuity. The difference increases toward the periphery. It is attributable to effects of optical aberrations. The discrepancy between optical and neural resolving power on oblique incidence needs to be taken into account whenever results obtained with external, extra-axial stimuli are to be analyzed in terms of retinal architecture.

I hope this helps

Gordon Dutton

Yes. It is called the Werstheimer effect and has been widely used experimentally and clinically. You can find a recent review in Spillman et al, JOV 2015

Hi Analisa,

yes, as Vittorio Porciatti wrote, there is a reliable way to do that. It's the Westheimer paradigm (no "r" in Westheimer), and the field size that is measured by it is called the "perceptive field size".Oehler (1985) has even used it with monkeys, and the seminal paper is by Lothar Spillmann. There is a chapter in my review on peripheral vision on it:

http://www.journalofvision.org/content/11/5/13

(or go to my website, ww.hans.strasburger.de)

Dear Analisa,

I am not sure if the above answers are adressing your question. If by "measuring the receptive field" you meant to determine its diameter then the avove hints apply, but if you are after a sensitivity profile, i.e. a description of exhibition or inhibition strenght as a function of retinal position you need some other method. For this the latter case it is useful to identify this profile with what is called a "point spread function" in physical optics. Exploiting this analogy allows it to calculate the receptive field profile from the way in which visual edges (sudden jumps in intensity) appear.

This line of reasoning has been used by Frans Blommart in his dissertation "Vision of Detail in Space and Time" (if I recall the title correctly). A description of the method can be found in

Roufs, J. A. J., & Blommaert, F. J. J. (1981). Temporal impulse and step responses of the human eye obtained psychophysically by means of a drift-correcting perturbation technique. Vision Research, 21(8), 1203-1221.

Point spread functions and detail detection

Blommaert, Frans J.J. and Heynen, Henny G.M. and Roufs, Jacques A.J., Spatial Vision, 2, 99-115 (1987)

Hope that is useful

Detlef

Dear Annalisa,

The crowding effect could be viewed as a behavioral index of receptive field size:

http://jov.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2433145

Hope this helps

Best,

Alex

see - Lev, M. & Polat, U. Space and time in masking and crowding. Journal of vision 15, 10, doi:10.1167/15.13.10 (2015).

there is a description how to estimate the human receptive field (perceptive field)

Frequency Doubling Technology, visual field perimetry can be used to measure not just a defective cell but also the sensitivity of non defective cell.