Brain mechanisms for simple perception and bistable perception

Wang, Megan; Arteaga, Daniel; He, Biyu J.

doi:10.1073/pnas.1221945110

Cited by 119 publications

(129 citation statements)

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“…In the spatial domain, both higher-order frontoparietal areas and ventral visual areas have been emphasized [15,16,[55][56][57]. Our results provide a potentially unifying picture across these previous findings.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 78%

Initial-state-dependent, robust, transient neural dynamics encode conscious visual perception

Baria¹,

Maniscalco

2017

Preprint

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Recent research has identified late-latency, long-lasting neural activity as a robust correlate of conscious perception. Yet, the dynamical nature of this activity is poorly understood, and the mechanisms governing its presence or absence and the associated conscious perception remain elusive. We applied dynamic-pattern analysis to whole-brain slow cortical dynamics recorded by magnetoencephalography (MEG) in human subjects performing a threshold-level visual perception task. Up to 1 second before stimulus onset, brain activity pattern across widespread cortices significantly predicted whether a threshold-level visual stimulus was later consciously perceived. This initial state of brain activity interacts nonlinearly with stimulus input to shape the evolving cortical activity trajectory, with seen and unseen trials following well separated trajectories. Furthermore, cortical activity trajectories during conscious perception are fast evolving and robust to small variations in the initial state. These results suggest that brain dynamics underlying conscious visual perception belongs to the class of initial-state-dependent, robust, transient neural dynamics. AUTHOR SUMMARYWhat brain mechanisms underlie conscious perception? A commonly adopted paradigm for studying this question is to present human subjects with threshold-level stimuli. When shown repeatedly, the same stimulus is sometimes consciously perceived, sometimes not. Using magnetoencephalography, we shed light on the neural mechanisms governing whether the stimulus is consciously perceived in a given trial. We observed that depending on the initial brain state defined by widespread activity pattern in the slow cortical potential (<5 Hz) range, a physically identical, brief (30 -60 ms) stimulus input triggers distinct sequences of activity pattern evolution over time that correspond to either consciously perceiving the stimulus or not. Such activity pattern evolution forms a "trajectory" in the state space and affords significant single-trial decoding of perceptual outcome from 1 sec before to 3 sec after stimulus onset. While previous theories on conscious perception have emphasized sustained, high-level activity, we found that brain dynamics underlying conscious perception exhibit fast-changing activity patterns. These peer-reviewed) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission.The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not . http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/133983 doi: bioRxiv preprint first posted online May. 3, 2017; 3 results significantly further our understanding on the neural mechanisms governing conscious access of a stimulus and the dynamical nature of neural activity underlying conscious perception.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 78%

Initial-state-dependent, robust, transient neural dynamics encode conscious visual perception

Baria¹,

Maniscalco

2017

Preprint

Self Cite

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“…Such enhanced bottom-up influence has been reported during visual perception (Wang et al 2013; Dentico et al 2014), but to our knowledge has not been associated with stimulus-independent anticipatory attention. This enhancement could reflect greater transmission fidelity from VOC to the frontoparietal areas that relaxes once the target stimulus disappears, a notion consistent with the putative gain enhancement of visual neurons thought to be driven by stimulus-independent, top-down influence.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 55%

Top-down cortical interactions in visuospatial attention

et al. 2017

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The voluntary allocation of visuospatial attention depends upon top-down influences from the frontal eye field (FEF) and intraparietal sulcus (IPS)—the core regions of the dorsal attention network (DAN)—to visual occipital cortex (VOC), and has been further associated with within-DAN influences, particularly from the FEF to IPS. However, the degree to which these influences manifest at rest and are then modulated during anticipatory visuospatial attention tasks remains poorly understood. Here, we measured both undirected and directed functional connectivity (UFC, DFC) between the FEF, IPS, and VOC at rest and during an anticipatory visuospatial attention task, using a slow event-related design. Whereas the comparison between rest and task indicated FC modulations that persisted throughout the task duration, the large number of task trials we collected further enabled us to measure shorter timescale modulations of FC across the trial. Relative to rest, task engagement induced enhancement of both top-down influences from the DAN to VOC, as well as bidirectional influences between the FEF and IPS. These results suggest that task performance induces enhanced interaction within the DAN and a greater top-down influence on VOC. While resting FC generally showed right hemisphere dominance, task-related enhancement favored the left hemisphere, effectively balancing a resting hemispheric asymmetry, particularly within the DAN. On a shorter (within-trial) timescale, VOC-to-DAN and bidirectional FEF-IPS influences were transiently elevated during the anticipatory period of the trial, evincing phasic modulations related to changing attentional demands. In contrast to these task-specific effects, resting and task-related influence patterns were highly correlated, suggesting a predisposing role for resting organization, which requires minimal tonic and phasic modulations for control of visuospatial attention.

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“…Neurons in frontoparietal regions not only exhibit control signals but also feature-selective representations (76,77). However, whether the frontoparietal cortices are directly involved in binocular rivalry is controversial (78,79).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attention model of binocular rivalry

Rankin

Rinzel

et al. 2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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When the corresponding retinal locations in the two eyes are presented with incompatible images, a stable percept gives way to perceptual alternations in which the two images compete for perceptual dominance. As perceptual experience evolves dynamically under constant external inputs, binocular rivalry has been used for studying intrinsic cortical computations and for understanding how the brain regulates competing inputs. Converging behavioral and EEG results have shown that binocular rivalry and attention are intertwined: binocular rivalry ceases when attention is diverted away from the rivalry stimuli. In addition, the competing image in one eye suppresses the target in the other eye through a pattern of gain changes similar to those induced by attention. These results require a revision of the current computational theories of binocular rivalry, in which the role of attention is ignored. Here, we provide a computational model of binocular rivalry. In the model, competition between two images in rivalry is driven by both attentional modulation and mutual inhibition, which have distinct selectivity (feature vs. eye of origin) and dynamics (relatively slow vs. relatively fast). The proposed model explains a wide range of phenomena reported in rivalry, including the three hallmarks: (i) binocular rivalry requires attention; (ii) various perceptual states emerge when the two images are swapped between the eyes multiple times per second; (iii) the dominance duration as a function of input strength follows Levelt's propositions. With a bifurcation analysis, we identified the parameter space in which the model's behavior was consistent with experimental results.B inocular rivalry is a visual phenomenon in which perception alternates between incompatible monocular images presented to the two eyes. During binocular rivalry, perceptual experience evolves dynamically while the external inputs are held constant. Binocular rivalry thereby provides an opportunity to gain insights about the intrinsic cortical computations underlying visual perception (1, 2).In conventional models of binocular rivalry, the competition between two percepts has been characterized as mutual inhibition between two populations of neurons selective for each of the two stimuli (3-11). Notwithstanding the differences in their details, these models consider the neural processing underlying binocular rivalry to be an automatic process. These models predict, therefore, that the dynamics of binocular rivalry are influenced mainly by bottom-up sensory inputs.Converging experimental evidence has shown, however, that binocular rivalry also depends on attention (for a review, see ref.12). First, EEG has been used to measure a neural correlate of the perceptual alternations during binocular rivalry when observers pay attention to the rival stimuli (13). However, this rivalry-induced modulation of the EEG signal is largely or entirely eliminated when attention is diverted away from the stimuli (14). Second, behavioral experiments comparing the perceptual cons...

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Brain mechanisms for simple perception and bistable perception

Cited by 119 publications

References 94 publications

Initial-state-dependent, robust, transient neural dynamics encode conscious visual perception

Initial-state-dependent, robust, transient neural dynamics encode conscious visual perception

Top-down cortical interactions in visuospatial attention

Attention model of binocular rivalry

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