Composite binocular perception from dichoptic stimulus arrays with similar ensemble information

Oakyoon Cha, Randolph Blake, Sang Chul Chong

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

2 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

We view the world through laterally displaced eyes that generate two streams of image signals differing slightly in their perspectives of the visual scene. The brain derives three-dimensional structures from these two image streams by establishing binocular matches and computing image disparities between the two eyes' views. Since the binocular matching problem can have multiple, alternative solutions, vision relies on several strategies to determine the most probable matches. The current study investigated whether the visual system might utilize regularities among neighbouring features (feature ensembles) when confronting this problem. We hypothesized that binocular perception with unlikely, anomalous ensembles would indicate unsuccessful binocular matches. We made dichoptic stimulus arrays of coloured circles and manipulated the colour similarity of stimulus items to produce probable or unusual ensembles when superimposed. Using binocular rivalry as a proxy index, we found that composite perception of dichoptic arrays was more stable when the stimulus items shared similar colours, and that unusual ensembles induced binocular rivalry. Our results suggest that binocular ensembles can be utilized to detect unsuccessful binocular matches, thus uncovering a potentially useful supplemental strategy for identifying binocular matches when viewing potentially confusing visual scenes containing redundant visual features.

Original languageEnglish
Article number8263
JournalScientific reports
Volume8
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2018 Dec 1

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This research was supported by the Brain Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT (NRF-2017M3C7A1029658) and by a Centennial Research Fund awarded by Vanderbilt University.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 The Author(s).

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • General

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