Carole Tham, The University of Manchester

<H3>Stochastic Resonance in Vision: Models and Data</H3>

Stochastic resonance (SR) is a phenomenon through which small amounts of
additive noise enhance the performance of a signal processing system. This
paradoxical enhancement is to be expected whenever the system has
nonlinearities. Recently the phenomenon has found exciting applications in
sensory physiology, where nonlinearities in biological sensory transducers 
make
SR ubiquitous. We report on resent experimental and modelling studies that
demonstrate the extent to which the human visual system is adapted to use 
SR.