DOCSLIB.ORG

Multistability in Perception Dynamics

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Multistability in Perception Dynamics In: Jaeger D., Jung R. (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience: SpringerReference (www.springerreference.com). Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, 2014. M 1780 Multistability in Perception Dynamics Thomson AM (2000) Molecular frequency filters at cen- interpretations, a phenomenon known as percep- tral synapses. Prog Neurobiol 62:159–196 tual multistability. Treves A, Rolls ET (1994) A computational analysis of the role of the hippocampus in memory. Hippocampus In perceptual multistability, while the subject 4:373–391 is aware of one percept, the others appear Tsodyks M, Markram H (1997) The neural code between suppressed from consciousness. Moreover, the neocortical pyramidal neurons depends on the trans- subject experiences constant switches from mitter release probability. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 94:719–723 being aware to being unaware of a given percept. Tsodyks M, Uziel A, Markram H (2000) Synchrony gen- This phenomenon is thought to provide eration in recurrent networks with frequency- a powerful method to search for neural correlates dependent synapses. J Neurosci 20(1–5):RC50 of conscious awareness, since it allows to disen- tangle the neural response related to the physical properties of the stimulus, which is continuously present, from that related to the conscious percept Multistability in Perception (Rees et al. 2002; Sterzer et al. 2009). Dynamics Perceptual multistability, and especially per- ceptual bistability (two interpretations), has been Gemma Huguet1 and John Rinzel2 extensively studied in the visual modality (see 1Departament de Matemàtica Aplicada I, Leopold and Logothetis 1999; Blake and Universitat Polite`cnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Logothetis 2002; Tong et al. 2006 for reviews). Spain The paradigmatic example of perceptual 2Center for Neural Science & Courant Institute of multistability in the visual system is the Mathematical Sciences, New York University, so-called binocular rivalry, for which there exists New York, NY, USA a vast literature (see, for instance, Blake 1989; Tong and Engel 2001). In binocular rivalry two drastically different images (face and house, for Synonyms instance; see Fig. 1a) are presented to the two eyes simultaneously, and perception alternates Ambiguous stimuli; Binocular/monocular between these two images. Other examples of rivalry; Multistable perception; Perceptual alter- perceptual bistability in the visual system include nations; Perceptual bistability/tristability; Per- the Necker cube (alternation of two depth orga- ceptual rivalry; Perceptual switching; Visual nizations; Fig. 1b), Rubin’s vase-face (alternation rivalry of two figure-ground organizations; Fig. 1c), bistable apparent motion (alternation of two arrangements of moving objects, Wallach 1935; Definition Hupe´ and Rubin 2003; Rubin and Hupe´ 2004; see http://cerco.ups-tlse.fr/~hupe/plaid_demo/demo_ Multistability in Perception Dynamics is the plaids.html for a demonstration), etc. phenomenon of spontaneous switching in the Typically associated to the visual system, subject’s perception between different interpreta- multistable perception has been reported in tions of an ambiguous sensory stimulus. other sensory systems: auditory (Deutsch 1974; Pressnitzer and Hupe´ 2006; Bregman 1990), olfactory (Zhou and Chen 2009), and tactile Detailed Description (Carter et al. 2008). Recent studies suggest some common characteristics of perceptual When subjects are confronted with an ambiguous multistability (Leopold and Logothetis 1999) sensory stimulus for an extended time, instead of across sensory modalities (Pressnitzer and Hupe´ experiencing a fixed percept, they report sponta- 2006; see also Schwartz et al. 2012; Denham neous switching between the different et al. 2012), namely: Multistability in Perception Dynamics 1781 M ab c Multistability in Perception Dynamics, between a house and a face. (b) Necker cube; it can be Fig. 1 Examples of visually ambiguous patterns (a) perceived as a cube with the lower-left face or the upper- Face-house rival image created by Frank Tong and used right face in front. (c) Rubin’s face-vase; it can be per- in his fMRI study of binocular rivalry (reproduced from ceived as a white vase or the silhouette of two black faces. Tong et al. 1998 with permission from Elsevier); when Figures (b) and (c) from wikimedia commons viewed with green-red 3D glasses, perception alternates • Exclusivity. Conflicting visual representations (I) Increasing the stimulus strength in one eye are not simultaneously present. will increase the predominance of the • Inevitability. Given sufficient time, switching stimulus. will ultimately occur. Some factors such as (II) Increasing the stimulus strength in one eye attention (van Ee et al. 2005; Meng and Tong will affect the mean dominance duration of 2004) and strong intrinsic or extrinsic biases the eye with highest contrast (Brascamp towards one of the percepts (Lack 1978; et al. 2006; Boxtel et al. 2007; Klink Moreno-Bote et al. 2010) can slow switching et al. 2008; Moreno-Bote et al. 2010). M down but do not eliminate it. (III) Increasing the stimulus strength in one eye • Randomness. Durations of perceptual bouts fol- will increase the alternation rate. low log-normal (or gamma) distributions (Levelt (IV) Increasing the stimulus strength in both 1968;Lehky1995; Logothetis et al. 1996; eyes will increase the alternation rate. Brascamp et al. 2005). Correlations between Although these propositions were originally durations of successive perceptual bouts are described for the domain of binocular rivalry, absent or insignificant (Lehky 1995; Logothetis dynamic properties for some stimulus manipula- et al. 1996; Pastukhov and Braun 2011). tions in other bistable paradigms also satisfy them Since alternations occur not only when the (Rubin and Hupe´ 2004; van Ee 2005; Klink inputs to the competing percepts are equal but et al. 2008; Moreno-Bote et al. 2010). also when they are largely unbalanced, one can study how changes in the stimulus’ parameters affect perceptual dominance durations. For the Neural Correlates of Perception domain of binocular rivalry, Levelt introduced a set of four “propositions” that summarize the Experimental results in the visual system for sub- effects of stimulus contrast of the monocular jects experiencing rivalry – imaging in humans images on the switching dynamics (Levelt and electrophysiology in awake, behaving 1968). These properties, which are based on monkeys – have revealed traces of neural activity experimental observations, have been object of that correlates with subject’s perception at ana- study in several works on perceptual bistability. tomically lower areas of visual processing (Tong Based on the existing literature, there is a general and Engel 2001; Polonsky et al. 2000; Parkkonen agreement on the reformulation of the second et al. 2008), higher areas of visual processing proposition. Thus, Levelt’s updated set of binoc- (Leopold and Logothetis 1996; Tong ular rivalry propositions state that: et al. 1998; Leopold and Logothetis 1999; M 1782 Multistability in Perception Dynamics Sheinberg and Logothetis 1997), as well as Tempo (Tones/Sec) 20 10 5 3 nonvisual parietal and frontal areas (Sterzer and 20 Kleinschmidt 2007). Moreover, monkey electro- physiology (Leopold and Logothetis 1996) revealed that the proportion of neurons firing in 15 time with perception increases along the visual Always pathway. Thus, while evidence of alternations is Segregated seen in different brain areas, the origin, which 10 may involve interacting multiple areas, is still unknown. 5 Temporal Coherence Boundary Ambiguous Region Always Frequency Separation (Semitones) Coherent Fission Boundary Perceptual Multistability in Different 0 Sensory Modalities: Auditory Streaming 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 Tone Repetition Time (msec) Perceptual multistability has been extensively Multistability in Perception Dynamics, Fig. 2 Van studied in the visual system. However, Noorden diagram for the auditory streaming paradigm multistable perception has been reported in (Reproduced from McAdams and Bregman 1979 and other sensory systems, in particular in the audi- adapted from Van Noorden (1975) with permission from the author) tory system (see Schwartz et al. 2012 for a short review). Examples of multistability in the audi- tory system are found in binaural rivalry (Deutsch http://auditoryneuroscience.com/topics/streaming- 1974), in the verbal transformation effect alternating-tones for a demonstration that illus- observed during word repetition (Warren and trates auditory streaming. Gregory 1958; Warren 1961) and, especially, in As in visual multistability, perceptual correla- the auditory streaming paradigm (Pressnitzer and tions of neural activity have been observed in Hupe´ 2006; Schnupp et al. 2010). different brain areas. Recent studies indicate For the auditory streaming paradigm, the stim- that perceptual auditory object formation, or ulus consists of a high-frequency tone A and a “streaming,” may be based on neural activity low-frequency tone B that are played alternately within the auditory cortex and beyond (Cusack (AB-AB pattern) or in triplets (ABA-ABA pat- 2005; Micheyl et al. 2005), as well as in early tern). For a slow presentation rate, the melody is stages of the auditory pathway, such as the perceived as a single stream that resembles cochlear nucleus (Pressnitzer et al. 2008). a galloping (for the triplet pattern). However, if Some models have been developed for the the presentation rate is fast enough and the fre-
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Multistable Perception and the Role of the Frontoparietal Cortex in Perceptual Inference
    PS69CH04-Blake ARI 14 November 2017 8:50 Annual Review of Psychology Multistable Perception and the Role of the Frontoparietal Cortex in Perceptual Inference Jan Brascamp,1,∗ Philipp Sterzer,2,∗ Randolph Blake,3,4,∗ and Tomas Knapen5,∗ 1Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48824 2Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Campus Charite´ Mitte, Charite–Universit´ atsmedizin,¨ 10117 Berlin, Germany 3Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 37240; email: [email protected] 4Vanderbilt Vision Research Center, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 37240 5Department of Cognitive Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 1081BT Amsterdam, Netherlands Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2018. 69:77–103 Keywords First published as a Review in Advance on multistable perception, binocular rivalry, perceptual inference, predictive September 11, 2017 coding, functional magnetic resonance imaging, transcranial magnetic The Annual Review of Psychology is online at stimulation psych.annualreviews.org https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-010417- Abstract 085944 A given pattern of optical stimulation can arise from countless possible real- Copyright c 2018 by Annual Reviews. world sources, creating a dilemma for vision: What in the world actually All rights reserved gives rise to the current pattern? This dilemma was pointed out centuries ∗ Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2018.69:77-103. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org All authors contributed equally to this work ago by the astronomer and mathematician Ibn Al-Haytham and was force- fully restated 150 years ago when von Helmholtz characterized perception Access provided by WIB6100 - University of Marburg on 06/22/18. For personal use only. as unconscious inference. To buttress his contention, von Helmholtz cited ANNUAL multistable perception: recurring changes in perception despite unchanging REVIEWS Further sensory input.
    [Show full text]
  • PAREIDOLIA : a Photographic Exploration of Multistable Perception Kallie Pfeiffer Trinity University, [email protected]
    Trinity University Digital Commons @ Trinity Art and Art History Honors Theses Art and Art History Department 4-19-2013 PAREIDOLIA : A Photographic Exploration of Multistable Perception Kallie Pfeiffer Trinity University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.trinity.edu/art_honors Recommended Citation Pfeiffer, Kallie, "PAREIDOLIA : A Photographic Exploration of Multistable Perception" (2013). Art and Art History Honors Theses. 2. http://digitalcommons.trinity.edu/art_honors/2 This Thesis open access is brought to you for free and open access by the Art and Art History Department at Digital Commons @ Trinity. It has been accepted for inclusion in Art and Art History Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Trinity. For more information, please contact [email protected]. PAREIDOLIA A Photographic Exploration of Multistable Perception KALLIE PFEIFFER A departmental senior thesis submitted to the Department of Art & Art History at Trinity University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation with departmental honors. April 19, 2013 ___________________________ ____________________________ Thesis Advisor Second Thesis Advisor ___________________________ ___________________________ Department Chair Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs Student Copyright Declaration: the author has selected the following copyright provision (select only one): [X] This thesis is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution‐NonCommercial‐NoDerivs License, which allows some noncommercial copying and distribution of the thesis, given proper attribution. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA. [ ] This thesis is protected under the provisions of U.S. Code Title 17. Any copying of this work other than “fair use” (17 USC 107) is prohibited without the copyright holder’s permission.
    [Show full text]
  • On the Multistable Use of Multistable Figures
    https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-08_10 CHRISTOPH F. E. HOLZHEY Oscillations and Incommensurable Decisions On the Multistable Use of Multistable Figures CITE AS: Christoph F. E. Holzhey, ‘Oscillations and Incommensurable De- cisions: On the Multistable Use of Multistable Figures’, in Multistable Figures: On the Critical Potential of Ir/Reversible Aspect-Seeing, ed. by Christoph F. E. Holzhey, Cultural Inquiry, 8 (Vienna: Turia + Kant, 2014), pp. 215–46 <https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-08_10> RIGHTS STATEMENT: Multistable Figures: On the Critical Potential of Ir/Reversible Aspect-Seeing, ed. by Christoph F. E. Holzhey, Cultural Inquiry, 8 (Vienna: Turia © by the author(s) + Kant, 2014), pp. 215–46 This version is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- ShareAlike 4.0 International License. The ICI Berlin Repository is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the dissemination of scientific research documents related to the ICI Berlin, whether they are originally published by ICI Berlin or elsewhere. Unless noted otherwise, the documents are made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.o International License, which means that you are free to share and adapt the material, provided you give appropriate credit, indicate any changes, and distribute under the same license. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ for further details. In particular, you should indicate all the information contained in the cite-as section above. OSCILLATIONS AND INCOMMENSURABLE DECISIONS On the Multistable Use of Multistable Figures Christoph F. E. Holzhey1 The children’s book Duck! Rabbit! dramatizes the lesson that just because one is right, others don’t have to be wrong.2 An endless dispute is quickly settled once the quarrellers experience an aspect change or gestalt switch and thereby realize that the same picture can be seen in different ways.
    [Show full text]
  • The Figure Is in the Brain of the Beholder: Neural Correlates of Individual Percepts in The
    The Figure is in the Brain of the Beholder: Neural Correlates of Individual Percepts in the Bistable Face-Vase Image A Thesis Presented to The Division of Philosophy, Religion, Psychology, and Linguistics Reed College In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Bachelor of Arts Phoebe Bauer May 2015 Approved for the Division (Psychology) Michael Pitts Acknowledgments I think some people experience a degree of unease when being taken care of, so they only let certain people do it, or they feel guilty when it happens. I don’t really have that. I love being taken care of. Here is a list of people who need to be explicitly thanked because they have done it so frequently and are so good at it: Chris: thank you for being my support system across so many contexts, for spinning with me, for constantly reminding me what I’m capable of both in and out of the lab. Thank you for validating and often mirroring my emotions, and for never leaving a conflict unresolved. Rennie: thank you for being totally different from me and yet somehow understanding the depths of my opinions and thought experiments. Thank you for being able to talk about magic. Thank you for being my biggest ego boost and accepting when I internalize it. Ben: thank you for taking the most important classes with me so that I could get even more out of them by sharing. Thank you for keeping track of priorities (quality dining: yes, emotional explanations: yes, fretting about appearances: nu-uh). #AshHatchtag & Stella & Master Tran: thank you for being a ceaseless source of cheer and laughter and color and love this year.
    [Show full text]
  • Leopold (2002) Stable Perception of Visually Ambiguous Patterns
    articles Stable perception of visually ambiguous patterns David A. Leopold, Melanie Wilke, Alexander Maier and Nikos K. Logothetis Max Planck Institut für biologische Kybernetik, Spemannstraβe 38, 72076 Tübingen, Germany Correspondence should be addressed to D.A.L. ([email protected]) Published online: 6 May 2002, DOI: 10.1038/nn851 During the viewing of certain patterns, widely known as ambiguous or puzzle figures, perception lapses into a sequence of spontaneous alternations, switching every few seconds between two or more visual interpretations of the stimulus. Although their nature and origin remain topics of debate, these stochastic switches are generally thought to be the automatic and inevitable consequence of viewing a pattern without a unique solution. We report here that in humans such perceptual alternations can be slowed, and even brought to a standstill, if the visual stimulus is peri- odically removed from view. We also show, with a visual illusion, that this stabilizing effect hinges on perceptual disappearance rather than on actual removal of the stimulus. These findings indicate that uninterrupted subjective perception of an ambiguous pattern is required for the initiation of the brain-state changes underlying multistable vision. Visual perception involves coordination between sensory sampling appearance of the pattern, not on intermittent disappearance of of the world and active interpretation of the sensory data. Human the sensory representation itself. perception of objects and scenes is normally stable and robust, but it falters when one is presented with patterns that are inherently RESULTS © http://neurosci.nature.com Group 2002 Nature Publishing ambiguous or contradictory. Under such conditions, vision lapses The initial aim of this study was to examine the influence of into a chain of continually alternating percepts, whereby a viable recent visual history on the perceptual organization of an ambigu- visual interpretation dominates for a few seconds and is then ous pattern.
    [Show full text]
  • History-Dependent Changes of Gamma Distribution in Multistable
    bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.08.06.239285; this version posted August 6, 2020. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY 4.0 International license. 1 History-dependent changes of Gamma distribution in multistable 2 perception 3 Short title: History-dependent changes of Gamma distribution in multistability 4 Alexander Pastukhov1,2*, Malin Styrnal1, Claus-Christian Carbon1,2 5 1Department of General Psychology and Methodology, University of Bamberg, Bamberg, Bavaria, 6 Germany. 7 2Forschungsgruppe EPÆG (Ergonomics, Psychological Æsthetics, Gestalt), Bamberg, Bavaria, 8 Germany. 9 *Correspondence to [email protected]. 10 Abstract 11 Multistable perception – spontaneous switches of perception when viewing a stimulus compatible 12 with several distinct interpretations – is often characterized by the distribution of durations of 13 individual dominance phases. For continuous viewing conditions, these distributions look 14 remarkably similar for various multistable displays and are typically described using Gamma 15 distribution. Moreover, durations of individual dominance phases show a subtle but consistent 16 dependence on prior perceptual experience with longer dominance phases tending to increase the 17 duration of the following ones, whereas the shorter dominance leads to similarly shorter 18 durations. One way to generate similar switching behavior in a model is by using a combination of 19 cross-inhibition, self-adaptation, and neural noise with multiple useful models being built on this 20 principle. Here, we take a closer look at the history-dependent changes in the distribution of 21 durations of dominance phases.
    [Show full text]
  • Humans Perceive Binocular Rivalry and Fusion in a Tristable Dynamic State
    The Journal of Neuroscience, October 23, 2019 • 39(43):8527–8537 • 8527 Behavioral/Cognitive Humans Perceive Binocular Rivalry and Fusion in a Tristable Dynamic State X Guillaume Riesen,1 XAnthony M. Norcia,2 and XJustin L. Gardner2 1Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Program, and 2Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305 Human vision combines inputs from the two eyes into one percept. Small differences “fuse” together, whereas larger differences are seen “rivalrously” from one eye at a time. These outcomes are typically treated as mutually exclusive processes, with paradigms targeting one or the other and fusion being unreported in most rivalry studies. Is fusion truly a default, stable state that only breaks into rivalry for non-fusible stimuli? Or are monocular and fused percepts three sub-states of one dynamical system? To determine whether fusion and rivalry are separate processes, we measured human perception of Gabor patches with a range of interocular orientation disparities. Observers (10 female, 5 male) reported rivalrous, fused, and uncertain percepts over time. We found a dynamic “tristable” zone spanning from ϳ25–35° of orientation disparity where fused, left-eye-, or right-eye-dominant percepts could all occur. The temporal characteris- tics of fusion and non-fusion periods during tristability matched other bistable processes. We tested statistical models with fusion as a higher-level bistable process alternating with rivalry against our findings. None of these fit our data, but a simple bistable model extended to have three states reproduced many of our observations. We conclude that rivalry and fusion are multistable substates capable of direct competition, rather than separate bistable processes.
    [Show full text]
  • Object Perception: When Our Brain Is Impressed but We Do Not Notice It
    Journal of Vision (2009) 9(1):7, 1–10 http://journalofvision.org/9/1/7/ 1 Object perception: When our brain is impressed but we do not notice it Universitäts-Augenklinik, Freiburg, Germany,& Institut für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie, Jürgen Kornmeier Freiburg, Germany Michael Bach Universitäts-Augenklinik, Freiburg, Germany Although our eyes receive incomplete and ambiguous information, our perceptual system is usually able to successfully construct a stable representation of the world. In the case of ambiguous figures, however, perception is unstable, spontaneously alternating between equally possible outcomes. The present study compared EEG responses to ambiguous figures and their unambiguous variants. We found that slight figural changes, which turn ambiguous figures into unambiguous ones, lead to a dramatic difference in an ERP (“event-related potential”) component at around 400 ms. This result was obtained across two different categories of figures, namely the geometric Necker cube stimulus and the semantic Old/Young Woman face stimulus. Our results fit well into the Bayesian inference concept, which models the evaluation of a perceptual interpretation’s reliability for subsequent action planning. This process seems to be unconscious and the late EEG signature may be a correlate of the outcome. Keywords: bistable perception, multistable perception, perceptual ambiguity, instable perception, ambiguous figures, Necker cube, Old/Young Woman, EEG, ERP, event-related potentials, object perception Citation: Kornmeier, J., & Bach, M. (2009). Object perception: When our brain is impressed but we do not notice it. Journal of Vision, 9(1):7, 1–10, http://journalofvision.org/9/1/7/, doi:10.1167/9.1.7. cube (Figure 2b, Necker, 1832) are found in the chapters on Introduction conscious perception of nearly every neuroscience textbook.
    [Show full text]
  • Multistability and Perceptual Inference
    ARTICLE Communicated by Nando de Freitas Multistability and Perceptual Inference Samuel J. Gershman [email protected] Department of Psychology and Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, U.S.A. Edward Vul [email protected] Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, CA 92093, U.S.A. Joshua B. Tenenbaum [email protected] Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139, U.S.A. Ambiguous images present a challenge to the visual system: How can un- certainty about the causes of visual inputs be represented when there are multiple equally plausible causes? A Bayesian ideal observer should rep- resent uncertainty in the form of a posterior probability distribution over causes. However, in many real-world situations, computing this distribu- tion is intractable and requires some form of approximation. We argue that the visual system approximates the posterior over underlying causes with a set of samples and that this approximation strategy produces per- ceptual multistability—stochastic alternation between percepts in con- sciousness. Under our analysis, multistability arises from a dynamic sample-generating process that explores the posterior through stochas- tic diffusion, implementing a rational form of approximate Bayesian in- ference known as Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). We examine in detail the most extensively studied form of multistability, binocular ri- valry, showing how a variety of experimental phenomena—gamma-like stochastic switching, patchy percepts, fusion, and traveling waves—can be understood in terms of MCMC sampling over simple graphical mod- els of the underlying perceptual tasks. We conjecture that the stochastic nature of spiking neurons may lend itself to implementing sample-based posterior approximations in the brain.
    [Show full text]
  • Bistable Perception: Neural Bases and Usefulness in Psychological Research
    Int. j. psychol. res, Vol. 11 (2) 63-76, 2018 DOI 10.21500/20112084.3375 Bistable perception: neural bases and usefulness in psychological research Percepción biestable: bases neurales y utilidad en la investigación psicológica Guillermo Andrés Rodríguez Martínez1,2, Henry Castillo Parra2 Abstract Bistable images have the possibility of being perceived in two different ways. Due to their physical characteristics, these visual stimuli allow two different perceptions, associated with top-down and bottom-up modulating processes. Based on an extensive literature review, the present article aims to gather the conceptual models and the foundations of perceptual bistability. This theoretical article compiles not only notions that are intertwined with the understanding of this perceptual phenomenon, but also the diverse classification and uses of bistable images in psychological research, along with a detailed explanation of the neural correlates that are involved in perceptual reversibility. We conclude that the use of bistable images as a paradigmatic resource in psychological research might be extensive. In addition, due to their characteristics, visual bistable stimuli have the potential to be implemented as a resource in experimental tasks that seek to understand diverse concerns linked essentially to attention, sensory, perceptual and memory processes. Resumen Las imágenes biestables tienen la posibilidad de ser interpretadas de dos maneras diferentes. Dadas sus características físicas, ellas admiten dos percepciones diferentes, asociadas
    [Show full text]
  • A Hierarchical Model of Perceptual Multistability Involving Interocular Grouping
    bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/800219; this version posted October 10, 2019. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. 1 A hierarchical model of perceptual multistability involving interocular grouping 2 Yunjiao Wang∗ , Zachary P KilpatrickYy , and KreˇsimirJosi´cYz 3 4 Abstract. Ambiguous visual images can generate dynamic and stochastic switches in perceptual interpretation known 5 as perceptual rivalry. Such dynamics have primarily been studied in the context of rivalry between two 6 percepts, but there is growing interest in the neural mechanisms that drive rivalry between more than 7 two percepts. In recent experiments, we showed that split images presented to each eye lead to subjects 8 perceiving four stochastically alternating percepts (Jacot-Guillarmod et al., 2017): two single eye images 9 and two interocularly grouped images. Here we propose a hierarchical neural network model that exhibits 10 dynamics consistent with our experimental observations. The model consists of two levels, with the first 11 representing monocular activity, and the second representing activity in higher visual areas. The model 12 produces stochastically switching solutions, whose dependence on task parameters is consistent with four 13 generalized Levelt Propositions. Our neuromechanistic model also allowed us to probe the roles of inter- 14 actions between populations at the network levels. Stochastic switching at the lower level representing 15 alternations between single eye percepts dominated, consistent with experiments.
    [Show full text]
  • Exogenously Triggered Perceptual Switches in Multistable Structure-From-Motion Occur in the Absence of Visual Awareness
    Journal of Vision (2016) 16(3):14, 1–16 1 Exogenously triggered perceptual switches in multistable structure-from-motion occur in the absence of visual awareness Department of General Psychology and Methodology, Otto-Friedrich-Universitat¨ Bamberg, Bamberg, Germany Center for Behavioral Brain Sciences, Magdeburg, Germany Cognitive Biology, Otto-von-Guericke Universitat,¨ # Alexander Pastukhov Magdeburg, Germany $ Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt-Universitat¨ zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany Center for Behavioral Brain Sciences, Magdeburg, Germany Cognitive Biology, Otto-von-Guericke Universitat,¨ Jan-Nikolas Klanke Magdeburg, Germany $ Here, we characterize the duration of exogenously Introduction triggered perceptual switches in an ambiguously rotating structure-from-motion display and demonstrate their independence on visual awareness. To this end, we Typically, we experience our perception as stable and triggered a perceptual reversal by inverting the on-screen unambiguous, in a sense that the same retinal input motion and systematically varied the posttrigger results in the same perception that remains constant presentation duration, while collecting observers’ reports even during prolonged viewing. However, this seeming about the initial and final directions of illusory rotation. one-to-one relationship between sensory inputs and We demonstrate that for the structure-from-motion perception is an illusion (Gregory, 2009; Metzger, display, perceptual transitions are extremely brief (20 2009). This is particularly clear when it is
    [Show full text]