Reversal negativity and bistable stimuli: Attention, awareness, or something else?

Ambiguous (or bistable) figures are visual stimuli that have two mutually exclusive perceptual interpretations that spontaneously alternate with each other. Perceptual reversals, as compared with non-reversals, typically elicit a negative difference called reversal negativity (RN), peaking around 25...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Brain and cognition 2010-10, Vol.74 (1), p.24-34
Main Authors: Intaitė, Monika, Koivisto, Mika, Rukšėnas, Osvaldas, Revonsuo, Antti
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Ambiguous figures
Attention - physiology
Awareness - physiology
Behavioral psychophysiology
Biological and medical sciences
Cerebral Cortex - physiology
Cognitive Processes
Comparative Analysis
Correlation
Diagnostic Tests
Electroencephalography
Electrophysiology
Event-related potentials
Evoked Potentials, Visual - physiology
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Male
N2pc
Natural sciences
Naturvetenskap
Necker cube
Optical Illusions - physiology
Perception
Photic Stimulation
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Reaction Time - physiology
Reversal negativity
Vision
Visual Perception
Visual Perception - physiology
Visual Stimuli
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Summary:Ambiguous (or bistable) figures are visual stimuli that have two mutually exclusive perceptual interpretations that spontaneously alternate with each other. Perceptual reversals, as compared with non-reversals, typically elicit a negative difference called reversal negativity (RN), peaking around 250 ms from stimulus onset. The cognitive interpretation of RN remains unclear: it may reflect either bottom-up processes, attentional processes that select between the alternative views of the stimulus, or it may reflect the change in the contents of subjective awareness. In the present study, event-related potentials in response to endogenous unilateral and bilateral reversals of two Necker lattices were compared with exogenously induced reversals of unambiguous lattices. The RN neither resembled the attention-related N2pc response, nor did it correlate with the content of subjective visual awareness. Thus, we conclude that RN is a non-attentional ERP correlate of the changes in the perceptual configuration of the presented object.
ISSN:0278-2626
1090-2147
1090-2147
DOI:10.1016/j.bandc.2010.06.002