Importance of background offset in rebound activity. A. and C. show for 2 neurons that when the stimulus bar was switched off simultaneously with the background, clear rebound activity was observed. B. When the stimulus bar was turned off but the background remained gray, rebound activity was much weaker or absent (same neuron as A). D. When the background was static black, the visual response was stronger than with the gray background (C), but there was little, if any, rebound activity around 500 ms after stimulus offset (same neuron as C).