Dichoptic temporal frequency differences do not lead to binocular rivalry

O’Shea, Robert P; Blake, Randolph

doi:10.3758/bf03207584

Cited by 23 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…An ideal stimulus would contain temporal modulations and no form conflict. The full-field flicker stimulus of O'shea and Blake (1986) comes close to this, but it contains no contrast—the primary attribute driving the response level of early visual neurons. In the present study, we will examine whether interocular temporal differences elicit rivalry using a novel stimulus: a random dynamic-noise sequence that is temporally filtered into narrow temporal pass-bands.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 83%

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Binocular rivalry produced by temporal frequency differences

Alais

Parker

2012

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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When the eyes view images that are sufficiently different to prevent binocular fusion, binocular rivalry occurs and the images are seen sequentially in a stochastic alternation. Here we examine whether temporal frequency differences will trigger binocular rivalry by presenting two dynamic random-pixel arrays that are spatially matched but which modulate temporally at two different rates. We found that binocular rivalry between the two temporal frequencies did indeed occur, provided the frequencies were sufficiently different. Differences greater than two octaves (i.e., a factor of four) produced robust rivalry with clear-cut alternations similar to those experienced with spatial rivalry and with similar alternation rates. This finding indicates that temporal information can produce binocular rivalry in the absence of spatial conflict and is discussed in terms of rivalry requiring conflict between temporal channels.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 83%

“…Testing the aftereffects with a binocularly-viewed dynamic test pattern did elicit rivalry alternations. Against this, however, another study using full-field flicker found that different temporal modulation rates in each eye failed to elicit any rivalry at all (O'shea and Blake, 1986). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Binocular rivalry produced by temporal frequency differences

Alais

Parker

2012

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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“…We know, for example, that interocular differences in rate of luminance flicker do not produce binocular rivalry alternations in the absence of form differences (O’Shea and Blake, 1986). We also know that the perceived direction of motion of a pattern dominant during rivalry can be influenced by the motion direction of the suppressed pattern, implying that motion information from the suppressed eye remains partially effective (Andrews and Blakemore, 1999, 2002).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stimulus Fractionation by Interocular Suppression

Zadbood¹,

Lee²,

Blake³

2011

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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Can human observers distinguish physical removal of a visible stimulus from phenomenal suppression of that stimulus during binocular rivalry? As so often happens, simple questions produce complex answers, and that is the case in the study reported here. Using continuous flash suppression to produce binocular rivalry, we were able to identify stimulus conditions where most – but not all – people utterly fail to distinguish physical from phenomenal stimulus removal, although we can be certain that those two equivalent perceptual states are accompanied by distinct neural events. More interestingly, we find subtle variants of the task where distinguishing the two states is trivially easy, even for people who utterly fail under the original conditions. We found that stimulus features are differentially vulnerable to suppression. Observers are able to be aware of existence/removal of some stimulus attributes (flicker) but not others (orientation), implying that interocular suppression breaks down the unitary awareness of integrated features belonging to a visual object. These findings raise questions about the unitary nature of awareness and, also, place qualifications on the utility of binocular rivalry as a tool for studying the neural concomitants of conscious visual awareness.

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“…Despite a plethora of studies on the spatial aspects of rivalry, its temporal behavior been explored less extensively. When stimuli are defined by spatial form but also have a temporal component, rivalry is usually possible provided the temporal frequencies are similar (42,43). Over a limited range, faster stimuli will dominate over slow or static stimuli (44)(45)(46)(47).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Natural images dominate in binocular rivalry

Baker

Graf²

2009

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

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Ecological approaches to perception have demonstrated that information encoding by the visual system is informed by the natural environment, both in terms of simple image attributes like luminance and contrast, and more complex relationships corresponding to Gestalt principles of perceptual organization. Here, we ask if this optimization biases perception of visual inputs that are perceptually bistable. Using the binocular rivalry paradigm, we designed stimuli that varied in either their spatiotemporal amplitude spectra or their phase spectra. We found that noise stimuli with ''natural'' amplitude spectra (i.e., amplitude content proportional to 1/f, where f is spatial or temporal frequency) dominate over those with any other systematic spectral slope, along both spatial and temporal dimensions. This could not be explained by perceived contrast measurements, and occurred even though all stimuli had equal energy. Calculating the effective contrast following attenuation by a model contrast sensitivity function suggested that the strong contrast dependency of rivalry provides the mechanism by which binocular vision is optimized for viewing natural images. We also compared rivalry between natural and phase-scrambled images and found a strong preference for natural phase spectra that could not be accounted for by observer biases in a control task. We propose that this phase specificity relates to contour information, and arises either from the activity of V1 complex cells, or from later visual areas, consistent with recent neuroimaging and single-cell work. Our findings demonstrate that human vision integrates information across space, time, and phase to select the input most likely to hold behavioral relevance.amplitude spectrum ͉ interocular suppression ͉ natural image statistics ͉ phase spectrum ͉ bistable perception T he human visual system is tasked with processing and organizing perceptual information relevant to the tasks we routinely perform. Recent investigations of the statistical properties of natural images indicate that the tuning characteristics of early visual mechanisms reflect measurable properties of the world (1). From simple image attributes such as luminance and contrast information (2) to Gestalt rules of perceptual organization such as proximity and good continuation (3, 4), known properties of perceptual systems appear tuned to the statistics of natural images (5-8). As a whole, these studies support the hypothesis that human visual processing has evolved to efficiently encode images from our natural environment (see ref. 1 for a recent review). Here, we directly address this hypothesis by asking if, when the visual system must choose between two competing inputs, it prefers the one most representative of the natural environment.During binocular rivalry, conscious perception alternates between different images presented to the two eyes. It is well established that some stimuli are preferred to others, for example, high-contrast stimuli will dominate over low-contrast stimuli, and thus will be ...

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Dichoptic temporal frequency differences do not lead to binocular rivalry

Cited by 23 publications

References 20 publications

Binocular rivalry produced by temporal frequency differences

Binocular rivalry produced by temporal frequency differences

Stimulus Fractionation by Interocular Suppression

Natural images dominate in binocular rivalry

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