Suzuki Satoru, Grabowecky Marcia
Department of Psychology and Institute for Neuroscience, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA.
Neuron. 2007 Nov 21;56(4):741-53. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2007.09.028.
Binocular rivalry has been extensively studied to understand the mechanisms that control switches in visual awareness and much has been revealed about the contributions of stimulus and cognitive factors. Because visual processes are fundamentally adaptive, however, it is also important to understand how experience alters the dynamics of perceptual switches. When observers viewed binocular rivalry repeatedly over many days, the rate of perceptual switches increased as much as 3-fold. This long-term rivalry speeding exhibited a pattern of image-feature specificity that ruled out primary contributions from strategic and nonsensory factors and implicated neural plasticity occurring in both low- and high-level visual processes in the ventral stream. Furthermore, the speeding occurred only when the rivaling patterns were voluntarily attended, suggesting that the underlying neural plasticity selectively engages when stimuli are behaviorally relevant. Long-term rivalry speeding may thus reflect broader mechanisms that facilitate quick assessments of signals that contain multiple behaviorally relevant interpretations.
为了理解控制视觉意识转换的机制,双眼竞争已得到广泛研究,并且关于刺激因素和认知因素的作用也已揭示了很多。然而,由于视觉过程从根本上说是适应性的,因此理解经验如何改变感知转换的动态也很重要。当观察者在许多天里反复观察双眼竞争时,感知转换的速率增加了多达3倍。这种长期的竞争加速表现出一种图像特征特异性模式,排除了策略性和非感觉因素的主要作用,并暗示了腹侧流中低级和高级视觉过程中发生的神经可塑性。此外,只有当竞争模式被自愿关注时才会出现加速,这表明当刺激与行为相关时,潜在的神经可塑性会选择性地参与。因此,长期的竞争加速可能反映了更广泛的机制,这些机制有助于快速评估包含多种行为相关解释的信号。