Brightness induction is the modulation of the perceived intensity of an area by the luminance of surrounding areas. Recent/nneurophysiological evidence suggests that brightness information might be explicitly represented in V1, in contrast to the/nmore common assumption that the striate cortex is an area mostly responsive to sensory information. Here we investigate/npossible neural mechanisms that offer a plausible explanation for such phenomenon. To this end, a neurodynamical model/nwhich is based on neurophysiological evidence and focuses on the part of V1 responsible for contextual influences is/npresented. The proposed computational model successfully accounts for well known psychophysical effects for static/ncontexts and also for brightness induction in dynamic contexts defined by modulating the luminance of surrounding areas./nThis work suggests that intra-cortical interactions in V1 could, at least partially, explain brightness induction effects and/nreveals how a common general architecture may account for several different fundamental processes, such as visual/nsaliency and brightness induction, which emerge early in the visual processing pathway.

This research has been partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through the research projects TIN2010-21771-C02-01 and TIN2010-21771-C02-02. OP is supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through the research project Consolider Ingenio (CSD 2007-00018).