The Necker cube—an ambiguous figure disambiguated in early visual processing

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...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Vision research (Oxford) 2005-04, Vol.45 (8), p.955-960
Main Authors: Kornmeier, Jürgen, Bach, Michael
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Ambiguous figures
Behavioral psychophysiology
Biological and medical sciences
Depth Perception - physiology
EEG
Electroencephalography
Electrophysiology
ERP
Event related potentials
Evoked Potentials, Visual - physiology
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Necker cube
Optical Illusions - physiology
Pattern Recognition, Visual - physiology
Perception
Perceptual ambiguity
Photic Stimulation - methods
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Vision
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Summary: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.
ISSN:0042-6989
1878-5646
DOI:10.1016/j.visres.2004.10.006