Steven Buck, Ph.D.

Professor

Degree From: University of California - San Diego
Interests: Visual perception, color vision, rod-cone interactions, neural substrate of human vision

Contact

Office Guthrie 227
Hours by appointment, please contact Beth Rutherford, 206-685-8035
Phone (206) 543-6789
Fax (206) 157-685
E-mail sbuck@uw.edu

Advising

Do I accept and train new psychology graduate students in general?
Yes
Behacviroal Neuroscience
Cognition and Perception

Research

My present research is focused on the issue of rod participation in the parallel set of cone pathways that mediate color vision. The goal is to develop a model of color vision incorporating the role of rods that accurately describes human perception and performance and that can be related to actual neural substrate. The approach involves sets of psychophysical studies of normal human vision coordinated with sets of physiological studies of primate retinal pathways. Examples of present psychophysical studies include: (1) Rod-cone color-mixture studies that determine the influence of rod signals in changing the hues produced by cone stimulation, especially the perceptual unique hues. (2) Scotopic color contrast (SC) studies that investigate the hues produced solely by rod signals (a) immediately after cone stimulation (successive contrast) or (b) adjacent to areas of cone stimulation (simultaneous contrast). (3) Wavelength discrimination studies that determine whether rod and S-cone signals oppose or augment each other in chromatic pathways that determine hue. Examples of physiological studies include the study of the interaction of rod and cone signals in the major classes of parvocellular-projecting ganglion cells, in AII amacrine cells, and in horizontal cells, all in the macaque retina.

Research Publications

  • Thomas, L., & Buck, S. (2006). Foveal vs. extra-foveal contributions to rod hue biases. Visual Neuroscience, 23, 539-542
  • Buck, S., Thomas, L., Hillyer, N., & Samuelson, E. (2006). Do rods influence the hue of foveal stimuli? Visual Neuroscience, 23, 519-523
  • Thomas, L., & Buck, S. (2004). Generality of Rod Hue Biases with Smaller, Brighter, and Photopically Specified Stimuli. Visual Neuroscience, 21, 257-262
  • Buck, S. L. (2004) Rod-cone interactions. In L. M. Chalupa and J. S. Werner (Eds.), The Visual Neurosciences (pp. 863-878). Boston: MIT Press
  • Buck, S. & Knight, R. (2003). Stimulus duration affects rod influence on hue perception. In J. D. Mollon, J. Pokorny, and K. Knobluach (Eds.), Normal and Defective Colour Vision . Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 177-184.
  • Knight, R., & Buck, S. (2002). Time-dependent changes of rod influence on hue perception. Vision Research, 42, 1651-62.
  • Buck, S. (2001). What is the hue of rod vision? Color Research & Application, 26 Suppl., S57-S59.
  • Knight, R., Buck, S., & Pereverzeva, M. (2001). Stimulus size affects rod influence on tritan chromatic discrimination. Color Research & Application, 26 Suppl., S65-S68
  • Knight, R., & Buck, S. (2001). Rod influences on hue perception: Effect of background light level. Color Research & Application, 26 Suppl., S60-S64
  • Buck, S., Knight, R., & Bechtold, J. (2000). Opponent-color models and the influence of rod signals on the loci of unique hues. Vision Research, 40, 3333-3344.
  • Verweij, J., Dacey, D., Peterson, B., & Buck, S. (1999). Sensitivity and dynamics of rod signals in macaque H1 horizontal cells. Vision Research, 39, 3662-3672
  • Knight, R., Buck, S., Fowler, G, & Nguyen, A. (1998) Rods affect S-cone discrimination on the Farnsworth-Munsell 100-Hue Test. Vision Research, 38, 3477-3481
  • Buck, S., Knight, R, Fowler, G, & Hunt, B. (1998) Rod influence on hue-scaling functions. Vision Research, 38, 3259-3263