GENERAL COMMENTARY published: 24 November 2011 HUMAN NEUROSCIENCE doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2011.00148 Binocular rivalry stimuli are common but rivalry is not Robert Paul O’Shea* Discipline of Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience Research Cluster, School of Health and Human Sciences, Southern Cross University, Coffs Harbour, Australia *Correspondence:
[email protected] A commentary on There are two problems for Arnold with These arise for regions off the location in these sorts of examples: space where images would be identical in Why is binocular rivalry uncommon? the two eyes, the horopter (Aguilonius, 1613; Discrepant monocular images in the real 1. Although it is true that one will not Panum, 1858; Ogle, 1953). Binocular rivalry world immediately experience alternations could be common off the horopter – it is Arnold, D. H. (2011). Front. Hum. Neurosci. between the blurry and sharp images, simply not noticed. 5:116. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2011.00116 it is not true that there is no rivalry. In both situations Arnold describes, the Rather, the sharp images’ dominating tendency is for one to look at the nearby Recently Arnold (2011) asked “Why is bin- perception is a form of rivalry, well- object (Mandelbaum, 1960), bringing iden- ocular rivalry uncommon?”. He answered known from laboratory studies as per- tical sharp images onto the foveae. What is in an entertainingly written, provocative manent suppression (Ooi and Loop, needed to resolve the issue of the ecological article, for which I thank and congratulate 1994). optics of binocular vision, rather than exam- him. However, I will argue that Arnold’s 2.