Lateral inhibition is a process of increase in sharpness and contrasts in the visual response. This phenomenon is a characteristic feature of mammalian retina. In lateral inhibition, the different cells of the retina in the eye respond to the varying degrees of the light. In this process when one cell in retina activates in the response to light this impairs the activity of the neighboring cell. This causes the edges between the dark and light areas of the object to appear more prominent than would be in the actual sense.
