title: Normalization regulates competition for visual awareness.
abstract: Signals in our brain are in a constant state of competition, including those that vie for motor control, sensory dominance, and awareness. To shed light on the mechanisms underlying neural competition, we exploit binocular rivalry, a phenomenon that allows us to probe the competitive process that ordinarily transpires outside of our awareness. By measuring psychometric functions under different states of rivalry, we discovered a pattern of gain changes that are consistent with a model of competition in which attention interacts with normalization processes, thereby driving the ebb and flow between states of awareness. Moreover, we reveal that attention plays a crucial role in modulating competition; without attention, rivalry suppression for high-contrast stimuli is negligible. We propose a framework whereby our visual awareness of competing sensory representations is governed by a common neural computation: normalization.
authors.affiliation: Vanderbilt Vision Research Center, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37204, USA. s.ling@vanderbilt.edu
authors.forename: Sam
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ling
authors.forename: Randolph
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Blake
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001364:Awareness / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008959:Models, Neurological; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D011594:Psychometrics; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*