title: Minimal physiological conditions for binocular rivalry and rivalry memory.
abstract: Binocular rivalry entails a perceptual alternation between incompatible stimuli presented to the two eyes. A minimal explanation for binocular rivalry involves strong competitive inhibition between neurons responding to different monocular stimuli to preclude simultaneous activity in the two groups. In addition, strong self-adaptation of dominant neurons is necessary to enable suppressed neurons to become dominant in turn. Here a minimal nonlinear neural model is developed incorporating inhibition, self-adaptation, and recurrent excitation. The model permits derivation of an equation for mean dominance duration as a function of the underlying physiological variables. The dominance duration equation incorporates an explicit representation of Levelt's second law. The same equation also shows that introduction of a simple compressive response nonlinearity can explain Levelt's fourth law. Finally, addition of brief, recurrent synaptic facilitation to the model generates properties of rivalry memory.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Vision Research, York University, Toronto, ONT, Canada. hrwilson@yorku.ca
authors.forename: Hugh R
authors.initials: HR
authors.lastname: Wilson
mesh_terms: D004292:Dominance, Cerebral / Q000502:physiology*; D023882:Dominance, Ocular / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008568:Memory; D008959:Models, Neurological; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D015357:Vision Disparity / Q000502:physiology; D015348:Vision, Binocular / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*