Abstract Visual processing is segregated into ON and OFF channels as early as in the retina, and the superficial (output) layers of the primary visual cortex are dominated by neurons preferring dark stimuli. However, it is not clear how the timing of neural processing differs between “darks” and “brights” in general, especially in light of psychophysical evidence; it is also equally not clear how subcortical visual pathways that are critical for active orienting represent stimuli of positive (luminance increments) and negative (luminance decrements) contrast polarity. Here, we recorded from all visually-responsive neuron types in the superior colliculus (SC) of two male rhesus macaque monkeys. We presented a disc (0.51 deg radius) within the response fields (RF’s) of neurons, and we varied, across trials, stimulus Weber contrast relative to a gray background. We also varied contrast polarity. There was a large diversity of preferences for darks and brights across the population. However, regardless of individual neural sensitivity, most neurons responded significantly earlier to dark than bright stimuli. This resulted in a dissociation between neural preference and visual response onset latency: a neuron could exhibit a weaker response to a dark stimulus than to a bright stimulus of the same contrast, but it would still have an earlier response to the dark stimulus. Our results highlight an additional candidate visual neural pathway for explaining behavioral differences between the processing of darks and brights, and they demonstrate the importance of temporal aspects in the visual neural code for orienting eye movements. Significance statement Objects in our environment, such as birds flying across a bright sky, often project shadows (or images darker than the surround) on our retina. We studied how primate superior colliculus (SC) neurons visually process such dark stimuli. We found that the overall population of SC neurons represented both dark and bright stimuli equally well, as evidenced by a relatively equal distribution of neurons that were either more or less sensitive to darks. However, independent of sensitivity, the great majority of neurons detected dark stimuli earlier than bright stimuli, evidenced by a smaller response latency for the dark stimuli. Thus, SC neural response latency can be dissociated from response sensitivity, and it favors the faster detection of dark image contrasts.

Faster detection of “darks” than “brights” by monkey superior colliculus neurons