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Ergebnisse 3 Einträge
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How can our percept spontaneously change while the observed object stays unchanged? This happens with ambiguous figures, like the Necker cube. Explanations favor either bottom-up factors in early visual processing, or top-down factors near awareness. The EEG has a high temporal resolution, so event related potentials (ERPs) may help to throw light on these alternative explanations. However, the precise point in time of neural correlates of perceptual reversal is difficult to estimate. We developed a paradigm that overcomes this problem and found an early (120 ms) occipital ERP signal correlated with endogenous perceptual reversal. Parallels of ambiguous-figure-reversal to binocular-rivalry-reversals are explored.
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Normally we experience the visual world as stable. Ambiguous figures provide a fascinating exception: On prolonged inspection, the "Necker cube" undergoes a sudden, unavoidable reversal of its perceived front-back orientation. What happens in the brain when spontaneously switching between these equally likely interpretations? Does neural processing differ between an endogenously perceived reversal of a physically unchanged ambiguous stimulus and an exogenously caused reversal of an unambiguous stimulus? A refined EEG paradigm to measure such endogenous events uncovered an early electrophysiological correlate of this spontaneous reversal, a negativity beginning at 160 ms. Comparing across nine electrode locations suggests that this component originates in early visual areas. An EEG component of similar shape and scalp distribution, but 50 ms earlier, was evoked by an external reversal of unambiguous figures. Perceptual disambiguation seems to be accomplished by the same structures that represent objects per se, and to occur early in the visual stream. This suggests that low-level mechanisms play a crucial role in resolving perceptual ambiguity.
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Environmental information available to our senses is incomplete and to varying degrees ambiguous. It has to be disambiguated in order to construct stable and reliable percepts. Ambiguous figures are artificial examples where perception is maximally unstable and alternates between possible interpretations. Tiny low-level changes can disambiguate an ambiguous figure and thus stabilize percepts. The present study compares ERPs evoked by ambiguous stimuli and disambiguated stimulus variants across three visual categories: geometry (Necker cube), motion (stroboscopic alternative motion stimulus, SAM) and semantics (Boring's old/young woman). We found that (a) disambiguated stimulus variants cause stable percepts and evoke two huge positive ERP excursions (Cohen's effect sizes 1-2), (b) the amplitudes of these ERP effects are inversely related to the degree of stimulus ambiguity, and (c) this pattern of results is consistent across all three tested visual categories. This generality across visual categories points to mechanisms at a very abstract (cognitive) level of processing. We discuss our results in the context of a high-level Bayesian inference unit that evaluates the reliability of perceptual processing results, given a priori incomplete, ambiguous sensory information. The ERP components may reflect the outcome of this reliability estimation.
Erkunden
Team
- Kornmeier (3)
Eintragsart
Sprache
- Englisch (3)
Thema
- Pattern Recognition, Visual/*physiology
- Adult (3)
- Ambiguous figures, Necker cube, Multistable perception, EEG, ERPs, Bayesian inference (1)
- Brain Mapping (1)
- Cerebral Cortex/*physiology (1)
- Contingent Negative Variation/*physiology (1)
- Depth Perception/*physiology (2)
- Discrimination Learning/physiology (1)
- Electroencephalography (2)
- *Electroencephalography (1)
- Evoked Potentials (1)
- Evoked Potentials, Visual (1)
- Evoked Potentials, Visual/physiology (2)
- Female (2)
- Humans (3)
- Judgment/*physiology (1)
- Male (2)
- Optical Illusions/*physiology (2)
- Optical Illusions/physiology (1)
- Orientation/*physiology (1)
- Perceptual Closure/*physiology (1)
- Photic Stimulation (1)
- Photic Stimulation/methods (1)
- Psychophysics (1)
- Reversal Learning/physiology (1)
- Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted (1)
- Visual Cortex/physiology (1)
- Young Adult (1)