Abstract
Human observers viewed dichoptic orthogonal sine-wave gratings and indicated when exclusive visibility occurred in either eye. Contrast was held constant in one eye and was increased or decreased in the other eye for a number of alternation cycles (continuous presentation) or for only the duration of a single period of exclusive visibility (synchronous presentation). The synchronous presentation condition allowed us to identify the differing effects of contrast during the suppressed and during the dominant periods. Mixed phases were recorded as distinct from suppressed and dominant phases, and new classifications of compound-dominant and compound-suppressed phases are defined. The results indicate that binocular rivalry responds to stimulus contrast in two ways.1) The duty-cycle of dominance and suppression is determined by the relative image contrast between the two eyes, with dominance of the higher contrast image being favored, and2) the overall rate of alternation is driven by monocular image contrast during the suppressed phase (increased monocular contrast increases the alternation rate) and to a lesser extent by monocular contrast during the dominant phase (increased monocular contrast decreases the rate). A model is developed to reflect these ideas. These results support a reciprocal inhibition oscillator as the underlying mechanism of binocular rivalry.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Blake R (1977) Threshold conditions for binocular rivalry. J Exp Psychol: Hum Percept Perform 3:251–257
Dutour EF (1760) Discussion on a question of optics. Mem Math Phys pres DDvers Savants 3:514–530
Fox R, Herrmann J (1967) Stochastic properties of binocular rivalry alternations. Percept Psychophys 2:432–436
Fox R, Rasche F (1969) Binocular rivalry and reciprocal inhibition. Percept Psychophys 5:215–217
Hollins M (1980) The effect of contrast on the completeness of binocular rivalry. Percept Psychophys 27:550–556
Hudnell HK, Hollins M (1979) Fatigue of the suppression mechanism following prolonged binocular rivalry. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci [Suppl] 20:173
Lehky SR (1988) An astable multivibrator model of binocular rivalry. Perception 17:215–228
Levelt WJM (1965) On binocular rivalry. Institute for Perception RVO-TNO, Soesterberg, The Netherlands
Matsuoka K (1984) The dynamic model of binocular rivalry. Biol Cybern 49:201–208
O'Shea R (1983) Spatial and temporal determinants of binocular contour rivalry. Unpublished dissertation, University of Queensland
Sloane ME (1985) Binocular rivalry: a psychophysics in search of a physiology. In: Rose D, Dobson V (eds) Models of visual cortex. Wiley, Chichester
Sohmiya T, Sohmiya K (1985) Method for measuring strength of suppression in binocular rivalry. Percept Mot Skills 61:843–846
Sugie N (1982) Neural models of brightness perception and retinal rivalry in binocular vision. Biol Cybern 43:13–21
Wheatstone C (1838) Contributions to the physiology of vision. I. On some remarkable and hitherto unobserved phenomena of binocular vision. Philos Trans R Soc London 128:371–394
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
This work was supported in part by NSF grant BNS 8418731 and NIH grant EY 07760. The authors wish to thank Mary Bravo, Robert O'Shea, David Rose, David Westendorf and Heidi Wiesenfelder for their helpful comments on early versions of the manuscript
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Mueller, T.J., Blake, R. A fresh look at the temporal dynamics of binocular rivalry. Biol. Cybern. 61, 223–232 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00198769
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00198769