Visual Discomfort: Perceptual, Neural, and Functional Perspectives
A special issue of Vision (ISSN 2411-5150).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2026 | Viewed by 50
Special Issue Editors
Interests: neurology of visual stress; analysis of stressful images; migraine; photosensitive epilepsy; coloured filters; reading; typography; text design
Interests: visual discomfort; auditory discomfort; migraine; electrophysiology; pattern glare; schizophrenia; autism
Interests: visual perception; visual discomfort; visual function; natural image statistics; motion perception; color perception; visual stability; perceptual adaptation; pupillometry; spatial and temporal vision
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Visual discomfort has attracted increasing attention in recent years as a phenomenon that bridges perceptual, neural, and functional domains. It encompasses a broad range of adverse visual experiences, such as eye strain, visual fatigue, headaches, or perceptual distortions, which can arise in everyday visual environments. Despite its relevance to both basic and applied visual science, the mechanisms underlying visual discomfort remain unclear.
This Special Issue, “Visual Discomfort: Perceptual, Neural, and Functional Perspectives,” aims to bring together cutting-edge research that advances our understanding of why certain visual inputs produce discomfort and how this discomfort is associated with visual processing and behavior. We welcome contributions that address visual discomfort from diverse angles, including, but not limited to, perceptual mechanisms, neural correlates, visual performance, environmental factors, and individual differences.
Potential topics include the statistical properties of images that elicit discomfort, neural responses linked to aversive visual inputs, and the role of visual features in everyday tasks such as reading. We also welcome studies on the interaction between visual discomfort and cognitive factors. In addition, we invite studies exploring developmental or clinical populations, computational models, virtual or digital environments, novel methodological or measurement approaches, and cross-modal interactions involving visual perception.
By integrating perspectives from psychophysics, neuroscience, computational modeling, and applied visual sciences, this Special Issue seeks to establish a comprehensive view of visual discomfort and its broader implications for human vision. We hope this collection will serve as a platform for stimulating discussion, clarifying terminology, and promoting interdisciplinary dialogue.
We look forward to receiving your contributions.
Prof. Arnold Wilkins
Dr. Sarah Haigh
Dr. Sanae Yoshimoto
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Vision is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- visual discomfort
- visual functions
- visual perception
- neural correlates
- visual performance
- cognitive factors
- image statistics
- individual differences
- cross-modal interactions
- virtual and digital environments
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