Schedule of Events | Symposia

Sketchpad Series

Increased visual motion inhibition associated with higher levels of diurnal cortisol

Poster Session F - Tuesday, April 1, 2025, 8:00 – 10:00 am EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Daniel McDonough¹, Erin Ferguson¹, Rebecca Manley¹, Ainsley Thierren¹, Rachael Walsh¹, Craig M. Story¹, Daniel J. Norton¹; ¹Gordon College

Depression is associated with changes in visual motion perception. In healthy vision, a performance reduction is associated with discriminating the direction of motion of a large grating stimulus as compared with a small one at high contrast. This is presumed to be a perceptual consequence of center-surround suppression (CSS), and this reduction is increased in currently-depressed adults. Also altered in depression is spatial summation, the advantage offered by a large as compared to a small stimulus at low contrast. The relation between cortisol levels and CSS or spatial summation has not been studied, but may shed light on prior results in depressed individuals, given the links between cortisol, stress, and depression. The present study investigated visual motion perception in small and large stimuli at low and high contrasts and compared these psychophysical data to participants’ (n=14) cortisol levels at their predicted height of diurnal cortisol. An enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was used to determine participants’ salivary cortisol levels. In the visual perception battery, participants determined the direction of motion of a Gabor patch at varying sizes, contrasts and presentation times. Participants’ level of CSS was operationalized as the difference in accuracy between the small (1.5°) and large (7.5°) variations of the stimulus. Participants were sorted into a high-cortisol or low-cortisol group using a median split. At intermediate presentation times and high contrast, high-cortisol participants showed higher levels of CSS compared to the low-cortisol group. This is consistent with prior studies showing increased CSS in depression.

Topic Area: PERCEPTION & ACTION: Vision