RIVALRY & AWARENESS
Binocular rivalry and visual awareness - Our lab capitalizes on a variety of visual phenomena to investigate the neural basis of visual consciousness. During binocular rivalry, when different images are simultaneously presented to the two eyes, one does not perceive a coherent blend of the two images. For example, if you were to look at the adjacent face/house image through red-green filter glasses (i.e., "3D glasses"), one eye would be presented with the green face while the other would be presented with the red house. Perception alternates between each monocular image every few seconds for as long as the observer continues to view the two rivalrous patterns. Because binocular rivalry dissociates the observer's conscious state (constantly alternating) from the physical stimulus (unchanging), this phenomenon provides a powerful tool for investigating the neural basis of visual awareness.
Our lab has shown that activity in both high-level areas and early visual areas closely reflects the observer's moment to moment perception during binocular rivalry. Rivalry seems to involve early visual competition, and precedes the stage at which perceptual filling-in occurs in the visual system. Nevertheless, we have found that top-influences of attention and mental imagery can bias rivalry perception in a remarkably specific fashion.