The stroboscopic patterns as dissipative structures

Stwertka, Steven A.

doi:10.1016/s0149-7634(05)80231-3

Cited by 15 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 37 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This state of resonance may generate patterns of differential cell activation that not only resemble resonance patterns in physical systems (e.g., Christiansen et al, 1992), but possibly also patterns of activation that would result from the stimulation with real forms. As under standard viewing conditions, the activity generated by resonance phenomena might be transmitted further in the visual processing stream, finally activating orientation columns in the cortex and thus representing certain well-defined forms (Eckhorn, 1991;Stwertka, 1993).…”

Section: Discussion Of Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Besides the temporal parameters, these authors suggest the relevance of a so-called rebound response, a common excitatory response to the turning-off of an inhibitory stimulus. In another approach, Stwertka (1993) suggests a dynamical account of self-organization in the brain as the underlying principle of the experience and transformation of subjective forms. Specifically, he states that the phasic synchronization of sets of spatial orientation tuning columns induced by the intermittent light stimulation might result in the conscious experience of features corresponding to the activity of those tuning columns and that the transformations observed in subjective forms correspond to the trajectory of the states of a dynamical system through its phase space.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Flicker-induced color and form: Interdependencies and relation to stimulation frequency and phase

Becker

Elliott

2006

Consciousness and Cognition

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Publication InformationBecker, C., & Elliott, M. A. (2006 AbstractOur understanding of human visual perception generally rests on the assumption that conscious visual states represent the interaction of spatial structures in the environment and our nervous system. This assumption is questioned by circumstances where conscious visual states can be triggered by external stimulation which is not primarily spatially defined. Here, subjective colors and forms are evoked by flickering light while the precise nature of those experiences varies over flicker frequency and phase. WhatÕs more, the occurrence of one subjective experience appears to be associated with the occurrence of others. While these data indicate that conscious visual experience may be evoked directly by particular variations in the flow of spatially unstructured light over time, it must be assumed that the systems responsible are essentially temporal in character and capable of representing a variety of visual forms and colors, coded in different frequencies or at different phases of the same processing rhythm.

show abstract

Section: Discussion Of Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Flicker-induced color and form: Interdependencies and relation to stimulation frequency and phase

Becker

Elliott

2006

Consciousness and Cognition

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…(ii) If so, can they interact with neural activity evoked by physical stimuli to affect perception? To tackle these questions we consider stereotyped geometric hallucinations, often triggered by migraine, drug intoxications, and empty-field flicker (10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20); these phenomena are thought to arise from autonomous activity in visual cortex. Although little is known about how spontaneous activity affects the perception of physical stimuli, it is possible to approach the second question from another direction: How do physical stimuli affect perception of spontaneous activity?…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural interactions between flicker-induced self-organized visual hallucinations and physical stimuli

Billock

Tsou

2007

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

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Spontaneous pattern formation in cortical activity may have consequences for perception, but little is known about interactions between sensory-driven and self-organized cortical activity. To address this deficit, we explored the relationship between ordinary stimulus-controlled pattern perception and the autonomous hallucinatory geometrical pattern formation that occurs for unstructured visual stimulation (e.g., empty-field flicker). We found that flicker-induced hallucinations are biased by the presentation of adjacent geometrical stimuli; geometrical forms that map to cortical area V1 as orthogonal gratings are perceptually opponent in biasing hallucinations. Rotating fan blades and pulsating circular patterns are the most salient biased hallucinations. Apparent motion and fractal (1/f ) noise are also effective in driving hallucinatory pattern formation (the latter is consistent with predictions of spatiotemporal pattern formation driven by stochastic resonance). The behavior of these percepts suggests that selforganized hallucinatory pattern formation in human vision is governed by the same cortical properties of localized processing, lateral inhibition, simultaneous contrast, and nonlinear retinotopic mapping that govern ordinary vision.1/f ͉ MacKay effect ͉ spatiotemporal pattern formation ͉ spontaneous cortical activity ͉ stochastic resonance T he visual cortex is active even in the absence of retinal stimulation; this spatiotemporally structured neural activity may have perceptual implications (1-9). For example, Kenet et al. (3) (in visual cortex of anesthetized cats) find a succession of spontaneous patterned neural states that correspond to those induced by simple oriented geometric patterns. These specific neural patterns, if present in awake humans, must be subliminal. This result raises two intriguing questions (6). (i) Do analogous perceptible patterns arise in humans? (ii) If so, can they interact with neural activity evoked by physical stimuli to affect perception? To tackle these questions we consider stereotyped geometric hallucinations, often triggered by migraine, drug intoxications, and empty-field flicker (10-20); these phenomena are thought to arise from autonomous activity in visual cortex. Although little is known about how spontaneous activity affects the perception of physical stimuli, it is possible to approach the second question from another direction: How do physical stimuli affect perception of spontaneous activity? Here we explore three circumstances in which physical stimuli dictate perceivable cortical pattern formation.The most common geometric hallucinatory forms are lattices, spirals, concentric circles, and fan shapes (Fig. 1). We regard these hallucinations as spontaneous states because they are apparently self-organized by visual cortex (14-20) and can arise without visual stimulation; these perceptible states may be analogous to Kenet et al.'s (3) subliminal states (9). Their geometric forms are predicted by neural network models that generate stripe patterns of neura...

show abstract

“…The last hypothesis was further developed by Stwertka [134]. He suggested the patterns observed during stroboscopic stimulation are so-called dissipative patterns, that is self-organizing macrostates of spatio-temporal coherence in the cortex.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Specifically, and in relation to the anatomy of the human nervous system, the patterns were thought to represent the hypercolumnar organization of the visual cortical areas. Eckhorn [135] suggested that spatially distributed orientation columns in While some promising accounts for the understanding of subjective Benhamcolours [130,132] and stroboscopic patterns [134] have been described in the literature, there is so far no theoretical model able to explain the appearance of colours in the homogeneous ganzfeld-stimulation (although reference might be drawn to the models described in [130] and [132]), or the co-appearance of colours Introduction and forms in temporally modulated visual stimulation. The models accounting for subjective colour usually assume the colours to be generated at very early levels in the visual processing stream.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

9. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832)

Dieckmann¹

1989

Reichthum Und Armut Deutscher Sprache

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The stroboscopic patterns as dissipative structures

Cited by 15 publications

References 37 publications

Flicker-induced color and form: Interdependencies and relation to stimulation frequency and phase

Flicker-induced color and form: Interdependencies and relation to stimulation frequency and phase

Neural interactions between flicker-induced self-organized visual hallucinations and physical stimuli

9. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832)

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About