Using psychophysical performance to predict short-term ocular dominance plasticity in human adults

Abstract

Binocular rivalry has become an important index of visual performance, both to measure ocular dominance or its plasticity, and to index bistable perception. We investigated its interindividual variability across 50 normal adults and found that the duration of dominance phases in rivalry is linked with the duration of dominance phases in another bistable phenomenon (structure from motion). Surprisingly, it also correlates with the strength of center–surround interactions (indexed by the tilt illusion), suggesting a common mechanism supporting both competitive interactions: center–surround and rivalry. In a subset of 34 participants, we further investigated the variability of short-term ocular dominance plasticity, measured with binocular rivalry before and after 2 hours of monocular deprivation. We found that ocular dominance shifts in favor of the deprived eye and that a large portion of ocular dominance variability after deprivation can be predicted from the dynamics of binocular rivalry before deprivation. The single best predictor is the proportion of mixed percepts (phases without dominance of either eye) before deprivation, which is positively related to ocular dominance unbalance after deprivation. Another predictor is the duration of dominance phases, which interacts with mixed percepts to explain nearly 50% of variance in ocular dominance unbalance after deprivation. A similar predictive power is achieved by substituting binocular rivalry dominance phase durations with tilt illusion magnitude, or structure from motion phase durations. Thus, we speculate that ocular dominance plasticity is modulated by two types of signals, estimated from psychophysical performance before deprivation, namely, interocular inhibition (promoting binocular fusion, hence mixed percepts) and inhibition for perceptual competition (promoting longer dominance phases and stronger center–surround interactions).

Exercise alone impacts short-term adult visual neuroplasticity in a monocular deprivation paradigm

“…In healthy adults, a compelling example of short-term visual neuroplasticity can be induced by temporary monocular deprivation, typically with 2 to 2.5 hours of patching (Binda, Kurzawski, Lunghi, Biagi, Tosetti, & Morrone, 2018;Finn, Baldwin, Reynaud, & Hess, 2019;Lunghi, Burr, & Morrone, 2011;Lunghi, Burr, & Morrone, 2013;Lunghi et al, 2019;Lunghi, Emir, Morrone, & Bridge, 2015;Lunghi & Sale, 2015;Min, Baldwin, & Hess, 2019;Sheynin, Chamoun, Baldwin, Rosa-Neto, Hess, & Vaucher, 2019;Sheynin, Proulx, & Hess, 2019;Steinwurzel, Animali, Cicchini, Morrone, & Binda, 2020;Yao, He, Wang, Lu, Qu, Zhou, & Hess, 2017;Zhou, Clavagnier, & Hess, 2013;Zhou, Reynaud, & Hess, 2017), although the effects can be observed with shorter durations of occlusion (Min, Baldwin, Reynaud, & Hess, 2018). After patch removal, the deprived eye temporarily becomes more dominant.…”

Idiosyncratic preferences in transparent motion and binocular rivalry are dissociable

“…Recent studies showed no (Brascamp, Becker, & Hambrick, 2018;Cao, Wang, Sun, Engel, & He, 2018) or only a weak (Steinwurzel, Animali, Cicchini, Morrone, & Binda, 2020) correlation in percept durations between binocular rivalry and structure-from-motion. This might imply that there are two independent rather than one shared control mechanism for inferences in binocular rivalry and structure-from-motion.…”

“…These studies suggest that one of the two surfaces in transparent motion is perceptually dominant and that perceptual biases in transparent motion might be related to biases in perceptual dominance in binocular rivalry. Second, several recent studies (Brascamp, Becker, & Hambrick, 2018;Cao, Wang, Sun, Engel, & He, 2018;Steinwurzel, Animali, Cicchini, Morrone, & Binda, 2020) compared the temporal aspects of multistability in binocular rivalry and structure-from-motion (Wallach & O'Connell, 1953), which is similar to transparent motion. Especially because these studies showed inconsistent evidence about the correlation in percept durations between binocular rivalry and structure-from-motion, we believe it is interesting to compare the two classes of stimuli also with respect to their spatial aspects, that is, their directional biases.…”

Does Cortical Inhibition Explain the Correlation Between Bistable Perception Paradigms?

“…In addition, we include a bistable structure-from-motion stimulus ( Figure 2 ). While correlated perceptual dynamics have been consistently observed for the combination of binocular rivalry and bistable plaid perception ( Brascamp et al., 2019 ; Cao et al., 2018 ; Sheppard & Pettigrew, 2006 ), this picture is less consistent for other combinations of bistable stimuli, including the combination of binocular rivalry and bistable structure-from-motion ( Brascamp et al., 2018 ; Cao et al., 2018 show no significant correlation, whereas Steinwurzel et al., 2020 show a positive correlation between switch rates in these two paradigms). Adding a structure-from-motion stimulus to our battery, therefore, allowed us to reexamine any correlation with the other bistable phenomena and, if it is observed, to test whether it is (partly) accounted for by variance in the strength of surround suppression.…”