Voluntary Movements Regulate Binocular Rivalry

Scientists had shown that visual rivalries, whether it’s monocular or binocular have highly correlated temporal patterns of oscillations, see reference 1. Voluntary movements of the hand, might be scientifically consider as neurophysiological top-down processes can perfectly and timely alter the bistable audiovisual perception, see reference 2. In this study, therefore, we decide to investigate whether the voluntary movements of the limbs, namely, drawing by hands, can elongate the dominance duration of the dominate view. Astoundingly, we found that as long as the hand moves in the direction that’s correlated with the dominant view, its dominance duration can be significantly elongated.

Deep Breathing Governs Binocular Rivalry

Scientists had shown that visual rivalries, whether it’s monocular or binocular have highly correlated temporal patterns of oscillations, see reference 1. Inhalation and exhalation, however, can be cognitively controlled, and these neurophysiological top-down processes can perfectly and timely alter the bistable visual motion perception, see reference 2. In this study, therefore, we decide to investigate whether deep breathing can also control the binocular rivalry. Astoundingly, we found that deep breathing is the best governor of binocular rivalry, it has the ability to significantly elongate the dominance duration. Moreover, the human subjects have sufficient control over their visually aware; namely, they usually see a stimulus during deep inhalation & the other stimulus during deep exhalation.

Motion Triggers Indefinite Stoppage Against Binocular Rivalry

This article provides evidence that high-speed high-information visual stimulus is able to indefinitely dominate the visual awareness; at speed of 21 degrees/second. Greater speeds emphasize greater dominance duration for the motion stimulus, however, at 21 degrees/second the moving stimulus dominates the visual awareness exclusively and indefinitely. Astonishingly, no room for mixed precepts had been reported by the human subjects at that speed, as if, it’s the ultimate domination.

Attention model of binocular rivalry

When the corresponding retinal locations in the two eyes are presented with incompatible images, a stable percept gives way to perceptual alternations in which the two images compete for perceptual dominance. As perceptual experience evolves dynamically under constant external inputs, binocular rivalry has been used for studying intrinsic cortical computations and for understanding how the brain regulates competing inputs. Converging behavioral and EEG results have shown that binocular rivalry and attention are intertwined: binocular rivalry ceases when attention is diverted away from the rivalry stimuli. In addition, the competing image in one eye suppresses the target in the other eye through a pattern of gain changes similar to those induced by attention. These results require a revision of the current computational theories of binocular rivalry, in which the role of attention is ignored. Here, we provide a computational model of binocular rivalry. In the model, competition between two images in rivalry is driven by both attentional modulation and mutual inhibition, which have distinct selectivity (feature vs. eye of origin) and dynamics (relatively slow vs. relatively fast). The proposed model explains a wide range of phenomena reported in rivalry, including the three hallmarks: (i) binocular rivalry requires attention; (ii) various perceptual states emerge when the two images are swapped between the eyes multiple times per second; (iii) the dominance duration as a function of input strength follows Levelt’s propositions. With a bifurcation analysis, we identified the parameter space in which the model’s behavior was consistent with experimental results.

Extending Levelt’s Propositions to perceptual multistability involving interocular grouping

Levelt’s Propositions have been a touchstone for experimental and modeling studies of perceptual multistability. We asked whether Levelt’s Propositions extend to perceptual multistability involving interocular grouping. To address this question we used split-grating stimuli withcomplementary halves of the same color. As in previous studies, subjects reported four percepts in alternation: the two stimuli presented to each eye (single-eye percepts), as well as two interocularly grouped, single color percepts (grouped percepts). Most subjects responded to increased color saturation by more frequently reporting a single color image, thus increasingthe predominance of grouped percepts (Levelt’s Proposition I). In these subjects increased predominance was due to a decrease in the average dominance duration of single-eye percepts, while that of grouped percepts remained largely unaffected. This is in accordance with generalized Levelt’s Proposition II which posits that the average dominance duration of the stronger (in this case single-eye) percept is primarily affectedbychanges in stimulus strength. In accordance with Proposition III, thealternation rate increased as the difference in the strength of the percepts decreased. To explain the mechanism behind these observations, we introduce a hierarchical model consisting of low-level neural populations, eachresponding to input at a visual hemifield, and higher-level populations representing the percepts. The model exhibits the changes in dominance durationobserved in the data, and conforms to all of Levelt’s Propositions.

Multistage Model for Binocular Rivalry

Binocular rivalry is the alternating perception that occurs when incompatible stimuli are presented to the two eyes: one monocular stimulus dominates vision and then the other stimulus dominates, with a perceptual switch occurring every few seconds. There is a need for a binocular rivalry model that accounts for both well-established results on the timing of dominance intervals and for more recent evidence on the distributed neural processing of rivalry. The model for binocular rivalry developed here consists of four parallel visual channels, two driven by the left eye and two by the right. Each channel consists of several consecutive processing stages representing successively higher cortical levels, with mutual inhibition between the channels at each stage. All stages are architecturally identical. With n the number of stages, the model is implemented as 4 n nonlinear differential equations using a total of eight parameters. Despite the simplicity of its architecture, the model accounts for a variety of experimental observations: 1) the increasing depth of rivalry at higher cortical areas, as shown in electrophysiological, imaging, and psychophysical experiments; 2) the unimodal probability density of dominance durations, where the mode is less than the mean; 3) the lack of correlation between successive dominance durations; 4) the effect of interocular stimulus differences on dominance duration; and 5) eye suppression, as opposed to feature suppression. The model is potentially applicable to issues of visual processing more general than binocular rivalry.