Quantitave Study of Two-Pulse b-Wave Recovery Functions

Abstract

Two-pulse b-wave recovery in the cat was measured by the ratio of the amplitude of the b-wave evoked by the second member of a pair of pulses to the b-wave evoked by the first. This ratio, R₂/R₁, when plotted as a function of dark time was fitted by an exponential equation with two constants, i.e., 1––R₂/R₁ = a·e^––t/τ The empirical time constant, the time at which the fitted line crosses the R₂/R₁ ordinate at 63%, increases as luminance increases. An application of this analysis to human ERG data in the literature indicates the usefulness of the analysis and its capability of differentiating the scotopic from the photopic system.