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Competing rivalrous neural representations can be resolved at several levels of the visual system. Sustained percepts during interocular-switch rivalry (ISR), in which rivalrous left- and right-eye stimuli swap between eyes several times a second, often are attributed to competing binocularly driven neural representations of each rivalrous stimulus. An alternative view posits monocular neural competition together with a switch in eye dominance at the moment of each stimulus swap between eyes. Here, a range of experimental conditions was tested that would change the colors seen if mediated by eye dominance but not if by competition between binocularly driven responses. Observers viewed multiple chromatically rivalrous discs in various temporal and spatial patterns, and reported when all discs in view appeared the same color. Unlike typical ISR paradigms that swap the complete stimulus in each eye, some of the rivalrous discs were swapped at a different time, or faster frequency, than other discs. Monocular dominance of one eye at a time implies that all discs will rarely be seen as identical in color when some discs swap at a different frequency than others. On the other hand, competing binocularly driven neural responses are not affected by asynchronous swap timing among the individual discs. Results for every observer are in accord with competing responses at the level of binocularly driven, chromatically tuned neurons. Although an account based on eye dominance can be constructed using many small retinotopic zones that have independent timing for the moment of switching the dominant eye, competing binocularly driven responses are a more parsimonious explanation.

In the recent decade, studies have shown that short-term monocular deprivation strengthens the deprived eye's contribution to binocular vision. However, the magnitude of the change in eye dominance after monocular deprivation (i.e., the patching effect) has been found to be different between different methods and within the same method. There are three possible explanations for the discrepancy. First, the mechanisms underlying the patching effect that are probed by different measurement tasks might exist at different neural sites. Second, the test–retest variability of the same test can produce inconsistent results. Third, the magnitude of the patching effect itself within the same observer can vary across separate days or experimental sessions. To explore these possibilities, we assessed the test–retest reliability of the three most commonly used tasks (binocular rivalry, binocular combination, and dichoptic masking) and the repeatability of the shift in eye dominance after short-term monocular deprivation for each of the task. Two variations for binocular phase combination were used, at one and many contrasts of the stimuli. Also, two variations for dichoptic masking were employed; the orientation of the mask grating was either horizontal or vertical. Thus, five different tasks were evaluated. We hoped to resolve some of the inconsistencies reported in the literature concerning this form of visual plasticity. In this study, we also aimed to recommend a measurement method that would allow us to better understand its physiological basis and the underpinning of visual disorders.

A few hours of monocular patching temporarily enhances the deprived eye's contribution to binocular vision, constituting a form of adult brain plasticity. Although the mechanism for this plasticity is currently unknown, several imaging studies present evidence that monocular deprivation achieves its effects by changing excitatory-inhibitory balance in the visual cortex. Much of the past work on adult monocular patching utilized binocular rivalry to quantify the patching-induced shift in perceptual eye dominance, extracting periods of exclusive visibility (in which one eye's signal is suppressed from perception) to assess each eye's contribution to binocular vision while overlooking the occurrence of mixed visibility (in which information from both eyes is combined). In this paper, we discuss two experiments to investigate the effects of short-term monocular occlusion on the relative predominance of mixed and exclusive percepts during binocular rivalry. In addition to the known perceptual eye-dominance shift, we hypothesized patching would also increase the perception of mixtures during rivalry due to deprivation-induced changes in excitatory-inhibitory balance. Our data point to two previously unknown effects of monocular deprivation: (a) a significant increase in the overall fraction and median duration of mixed visibility during rivalry that is detectable up to at least an hour after removing the patch and (b) the overall fraction of superimposition; rather than piecemeal, mixed percepts are specifically enhanced after monocular deprivation. In addition to strengthening the contribution of the deprived eye, our results show that temporary monocular patching enhances the visibility of fused binocular percepts, likely the result of attenuated interocular inhibition.

Ocular alignment defects such as strabismus affect around 5% of people and are associated with binocular vision impairments. Current nonsurgical treatments are controversial and have high levels of recidivism. In this study, we developed a rehabilitation method for ocular alignment training and examined the rate of learning, transfer to untrained alignments, and retention over time. Ocular alignment was controlled with a real-time dichoptic feedback paradigm where a static fixation target and white gaze-contingent ring were presented to the dominant eye and a black gaze-contingent ring with no fixation target was presented to the nondominant eye. Observers were required to move their eyes to center the rings on the target, with real-time feedback provided by the size of the rings. Offsetting the ring of the nondominant temporal or nasal visual field required convergent or divergent ocular deviation, respectively, to center the ring on the fixation target. Learning was quantified as the time taken to achieve target deviation of 2° (easy, E) or 4° (hard, H) for convergence (CE, CH) or divergence (DE, DH) over 40 trials. Thirty-two normally sighted observers completed two training sequences separated by one week. Subjects were randomly assigned to a training sequence: CE-CH-DE, CH-CE-DE, DE-DH-CE, or DH-DE-CE. The results showed that training was retained over the course of approximately one week across all conditions. Training on an easy deviation angle transferred to untrained hard angles within convergence or divergence but not between these directions. We conclude that oculomotor alignment can be rapidly trained, retained, and transferred with a feedback-based dichoptic paradigm. Feedback-based oculomotor training may therefore provide a noninvasive method for the rehabilitation of ocular alignment defects.

Binocular rivalry has become an important index of visual performance, both to measure ocular dominance or its plasticity, and to index bistable perception. We investigated its interindividual variability across 50 normal adults and found that the duration of dominance phases in rivalry is linked with the duration of dominance phases in another bistable phenomenon (structure from motion). Surprisingly, it also correlates with the strength of center–surround interactions (indexed by the tilt illusion), suggesting a common mechanism supporting both competitive interactions: center–surround and rivalry. In a subset of 34 participants, we further investigated the variability of short-term ocular dominance plasticity, measured with binocular rivalry before and after 2 hours of monocular deprivation. We found that ocular dominance shifts in favor of the deprived eye and that a large portion of ocular dominance variability after deprivation can be predicted from the dynamics of binocular rivalry before deprivation. The single best predictor is the proportion of mixed percepts (phases without dominance of either eye) before deprivation, which is positively related to ocular dominance unbalance after deprivation. Another predictor is the duration of dominance phases, which interacts with mixed percepts to explain nearly 50% of variance in ocular dominance unbalance after deprivation. A similar predictive power is achieved by substituting binocular rivalry dominance phase durations with tilt illusion magnitude, or structure from motion phase durations. Thus, we speculate that ocular dominance plasticity is modulated by two types of signals, estimated from psychophysical performance before deprivation, namely, interocular inhibition (promoting binocular fusion, hence mixed percepts) and inhibition for perceptual competition (promoting longer dominance phases and stronger center–surround interactions).

The response latency of steady-state visually evoked potentials (SSVEPs) is a sensitive measurement for investigating visual functioning of the human brain, specifically in visual development and for clinical evaluation. This latency can be measured from the slope of phase versus frequency of responses by using multiple frequencies of stimuli. In an attempt to provide an alternative measurement of this latency, this study utilized an envelope response of SSVEPs elicited by amplitude-modulated visual stimulation and then compared with the envelope of the generating signal, which was recorded simultaneously with the electroencephalography recordings. The advantage of this measurement is that it successfully estimates the response latency based on the physiological envelope in the entire waveform. Results showed the response latency at the occipital lobe (Oz channel) was approximately 104.55 ms for binocular stimulation, 97.14 ms for the dominant eye, and 104.75 ms for the nondominant eye with no significant difference between these stimulations. Importantly, the response latency at frontal channels (125.84 ms) was significantly longer than that at occipital channels (104.11 ms) during binocular stimulation. Together with strong activation of the source envelope at occipital cortex, these findings support the idea of a feedforward process, with the visual stimuli propagating originally from occipital cortex to anterior cortex. In sum, these findings offer a novel method for future studies in measuring visual response latencies and also potentially shed a new light on understanding of how long collective neural activities take to travel in the human brain.

Stereoanomalous (SA) subjects have normal visual acuity but reduced stereopsis and may have a prevalence of up to 30%. It has been suggested that, in SA subjects, an imbalance in interocular inhibition might underlie an asymmetry in sensory eye dominance (SED). Our study expands upon previous findings by examining binocular rivalry (BR) mean dominance durations, dichoptic masking (DM) thresholds and SED for a group of SA subjects compared to naive controls. We examined BR dominance durations and DM thresholds for 15 stereonormal (SN) subjects and 10 SA subjects with normal or corrected-to-normal visual acuity. All subjects had visual acuity of 20/40 or better and less than or equal to two lines difference between eyes. Individuals who scored ≥6/9 on the Randot stereo test and

Experiments using enriched environments have shown that physical exercise modulates visual plasticity in rodents. A recent study (Lunghi & Sale, 2015, doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2015.10.026) investigated whether exercise also affects visual plasticity in adult humans. The plastic effect they measured was the shift in ocular dominance caused by 2 hours of monocular deprivation (e.g. by an eye patch). They used a binocular rivalry task to measure this shift. They found that the magnitude of the shift was increased by exercise during the deprivation period. This effect of exercise was later disputed by a study that used a different behavioural task (Zhouet al., 2017, doi: 10.1155/2017/4780876). Our goal was to determine whether the difference in task was responsible for that study’s failure to find an exercise effect. We set out to replicate Lunghi & Sale (2015). We measured ocular dominance with a rivalry task before and after 2 hours of deprivation. We measured data from two conditions in 30 subjects. On two separate days they either performed exercise or rested during the deprivation period. Contrary to the previous study, we find no significant effect of exercise. We hypothesise that exercise may affect rivalry dynamics in a way that interacts with the measurement of the deprivation effect.

Amblyopia is a developmental disorder of vision usually associated with the presence of strabismus and/or anisometropia during early childhood. Subject literature has shown that both the amblyopic and fellow eyes (especially in strabismic subjects) may manifest a variety of perceptual and oculomotor deficits. Previous studies using simple saccadic responses (pro-saccades) showed an increased saccadic latency only for the amblyopic eye viewing conditions. So far, there have appeared no saccadic latency studies in strabismic amblyopia for more complex volitional saccades. In order to maximize the contribution of the central retina in the process of saccade initiation, we decided to use delayed saccadic responses in order to test the hypothesis about saccadic latency increase in both eyes in strabismic amblyopes. The results from our study have shown that saccadic latency is increased both in the dominant and amblyopic eyes. In addition, the amblyopic eye in the strabismic group showed greater increase in saccadic latency compared to an amblyopic eye in the anisometropic group from our previous study. The observed increase in saccadic reaction time for the dominant eye is novel and provides further evidence that the visual pathway associated with the dominant eye might be also impaired in strabismic amblyopia. Since an abnormal binocular input during visual system development may affect gaze stability in both eyes, we speculate that unsteady fixation accompanied with subtle perceptual deficits contribute to an increase in saccadic latency that is observed in the dominant eye. Moreover, it appears that the cortical processes related to saccade decisions are delayed both for amblyopic and fellow eyes in strabismic subjects.

Simultaneously presented visual events lead to temporally asynchronous percepts. This has led some researchers to conclude that the asynchronous experience is a manifestation of differences in neural processing time for different visual attributes. Others, however, have suggested that the asynchronous experience is due to differences in temporal markers for changes of different visual attributes. Here, two sets of bars were presented, one to each eye. Either the bars were moving or their luminance was gradually changing. Bars moved horizontally in counterphase at low frequencies along short trajectories and were presented stereoscopically, such that the horizontal movements were perceived as back-and-forth motion on a sagittal plane, or monocularly to a dominant eye, preserving a perception of the horizontal movements on a frontal plane. In a control condition, bars were stationary and their luminance was modulated. The changes in stimulus speed or luminance occurred sinusoidally. When asked to adjust the phase of one stimulus to the other to achieve synchronous perception, participants showed a constant phase offset at the lowest frequencies used. Given the absence of abrupt transitions and the presence of similar gradual turning points in our stimuli to control for attentional effects, it can be concluded that asynchronous percepts in multimodal stimuli may at least in part be a manifestation of difference in neural processing time of visual attributes rather than solely a difference in the temporal markers (transitions versus turning points).

Contains fulltext : 193282.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) It is commonly assumed that one eye is dominant over the other eye. Eye dominance is most frequently determined by using the hole-in-the-card test. However, it is currently unclear whether eye dominance as determined by the hole-in-the-card test (so-called sighting eye dominance) generalizes to tasks involving interocular conflict (engaging sensory eye dominance). We therefore investigated whether sighting eye dominance is linked to sensory eye dominance in several frequently used paradigms that involve interocular conflict. Eye dominance was measured by the hole-in-the- card test, binocular rivalry, and breaking continuous flash suppression (b-CFS). Relationships between differences in eye dominance were assessed using Bayesian statistics. Strikingly, none of the three interocular conflict tasks yielded a difference in perceptual report between eyes when comparing the dominant eye with the nondominant eye as determined by the hole-in-the-card test. From this, we conclude that sighting eye dominance is different from sensory eye dominance. Interestingly, eye dominance of onset rivalry correlated with that of ongoing rivalry but not with that of b-CFS. Hence, we conclude that b-CFS reflects a different form of eye dominance than onset and ongoing rivalry. In sum, eye dominance seems to be a multifaceted phenomenon, which is differently expressed across interocular conflict paradigms. Finally, we highly discourage using tests measuring sighting eye dominance to determine the dominant eye in a subsequent experiment involving interocular conflict. Rather, we recommend that whenever experimental manipulations require a priori knowledge of eye dominance, eye dominance should be determined using pretrials of the same task that will be used in the main experiment. 13 p.

Continuous flash suppression (CFS) is a popular technique whereby a dynamic sequence of Mondrian patterns is presented to one eye in order to suppress a static target presented to the other eye. Although the effectiveness of CFS is generally assumed to increase with the flicker rate of the Mondrian masker, a recent study has shown that suppression is optimal at very low masker rates for sustained targets, but higher rates may be necessary for transient targets. Here we vary the modulation rates of the masker and target using temporally filtered dynamic noise, which allowed us to examine the relationship between target and masker frequency and its effect on suppression strength. Using these carefully controlled, temporally narrowband stimuli, we demonstrate a pattern of results showing that suppression is greatest when target and masker modulate at similar frequencies. This finding indicates the involvement of early temporal-frequency-tuned filters underlying CFS and is consistent with many existing findings in the CFS literature. We also find that these temporally selective processes are orientation selective, which points to an early cortical substrate such as neurons in primary visual cortex. Overall, our study reveals that CFS suppression can be maximized by carefully matching the masker and target in temporal frequency and orientation. More generally, we show the importance of using carefully controlled stimuli for elucidating the underlying mechanisms of CFS. This approach is important at a theoretical level, as it will enable comparison of CFS with existing models of binocular rivalry and interocular suppression and facilitate a unified explanatory framework.

© 2017 The Authors. We develop and test a new two-dimensional model for binocular combination of the two eyes' luminance profiles. For first-order stimuli, the model assumes that one eye's luminance profile first goes through a luminance compressor, receives gain-control and gainenhancement from the other eye, and then linearly combines the other eye's output profile. For secondorder stimuli, rectification is added in the signal path of the model before the binocular combination site. Both the total contrast and luminance energies, weighted sums over both the space and spatial-frequency domains, were used in the interocular gain-control, while only the total contrast energy was used in the interocular gain-enhancement. To challenge the model, we performed a binocular brightness matching experiment over a large range of background and target luminances. The target stimulus was a dichoptic disc with a sharp edge that has an increment or decrement luminance from its background. The disk's interocular luminance ratio varied from trial to trial. To refine the model we tested three luminance compressors, five nested binocular combination models (including the Ding-Sperling and the DSKL models), and examined the presence or absence of total luminance energy in the model. We found that (1) installing a luminance compressor, either a logarithmic luminance function or luminance gain-control, (2) including both contrast and luminance energies, and (3) adding interocular gainenhancement (the DSKL model) to a combined model significantly improved its performance. The combined model provides a systematic account of binocular luminance summation over a large range of luminance input levels. It gives a unified explanation of Fechner's paradox observed on a dark background, and a winnertake- all phenomenon observed on a light background. To further test the model, we conducted two additional experiments: luminance summation of discs with asymmetric contour information (Experiment 2), similar to Levelt (1965) and binocular combination of secondorder contrast-modulated gratings (Experiment 3). We used the model obtained in Experiment 1 to predict the results of Experiments 2 and 3 and the results of our previous studies. Model simulations further refined the contrast space weight and contrast sensitivity functions that are installed in the model, and provide a reasonable account for rebalancing of imbalanced binocular vision by reducing the mean luminance in the dominant eye.

Different degrees of eye dominance may need to be considered when comparing monocular and binocular performance or estimating binocular summation effects. The purpose of this study was to explore eye dominance under binocular viewing conditions and observe gradual differences in preference. Two binocular eye-dominance tests were evaluated and compared to the hole-in-the-card sighting test. The first experiment was based on a binocular sighting test. The second originated from the variable-angle mirror test, utilizing physiological diplopia to determine which eye dominates the binocular percept. The participants were 32 healthy subject with normal sight. For both experiments there were plausible effects of different degrees of eye dominance affecting how the subjects positioned or perceived the scene. The outcomes were supported by a statistically significant correlation with an interocular difference in sensitivity to degraded visibility. A statistically significant correlation was found between the hole-in-the-card test and the variable-angle mirror test (r = 0.527, plt; 0.01). The experiments confirm the plausible occurrence of forms of eye dominance under binocular viewing conditions. The correlation with the hole-in-the-card test was weak to moderate, due to factors that appear to be related to testing and viewing conditions. Interocular differences in sensitivity to blur appear to be a useful factor in further grading of eye dominance.

Ocular dominance has been extensively studied, often with the goal to understand neuroplasticity, which is a key characteristic within the critical period. Recent work on monocular deprivation, however, demonstrates residual neuroplasticity in the adult visual cortex. After deprivation of patterned inputs by monocular patching, the patched eye becomes more dominant. Since patching blocks both the Fourier amplitude and phase information of the input image, it remains unclear whether deprivation of the Fourier phase information alone is able to reshape eye dominance. Here, for the first time, we show that removing of the phase regularity without changing the amplitude spectra of the input image induced a shift of eye dominance toward the deprived eye, but only if the eye dominance was measured with a binocular rivalry task rather than an interocular phase combination task. These different results indicate that the two measurements are supported by different mechanisms. Phase integration requires the fusion of monocular images. The fused percept highly relies on the weights of the phase-sensitive monocular neurons that respond to the two monocular images. However, binocular rivalry reflects the result of direct interocular competition that strongly weights the contour information transmitted along each monocular pathway. Monocular phase deprivation may not change the weights in the integration (fusion) mechanism much, but alters the balance in the rivalry (competition) mechanism. Our work suggests that ocular dominance plasticity may occur at different stages of visual processing, and that homeostatic compensation also occurs for the lack of phase regularity in natural scenes.

To analyze the interaction of cortical potentials elicited by dichoptic stimulation of the dominant and fellow eyes at different frequencies, a pair of programmed power supply units were used to drive a light emitting diode (LED) mounted in the right and left eyes of light-proof goggles to elicit the visually evoked cortical responses (VECPs). The right eye was stimulated at 11.5 Hz and the left eye at 11.0 Hz. Then the stimulation was repeated with the frequency of stimulation switched to the other eyes. The stimulus duration was 5 ms. The sampling rate was 1.0 Hz, and the duration of collection was 200 ms. The VECP of each eye was extracted separately. Individual VECPs could be recorded separately after simultaneous dichoptic stimulation of each eye. The amplitudes of the VECPs were not significantly different after stimulating the dominant eye and the fellow eye separately. The implicit times of negative peak (N-2) and the second positive peak (P-2) were shorter after stimulation of the dominant eye than after stimulation of the fellow eye, but the difference was not significant. However, the implicit time of N-2 elicited by stimulating the dominant eye was significantly shorter when the stimulation rate was 11.5 Hz. The VECPs elicited by stimulating the two eyes can be recorded separately by simultaneous dichoptic stimulation. Dichoptic simultaneous stimulation required a shorter time and may be a more sensitive method of analyzing binocular interactions compared to the classic VECPs using monocular stimulation.

Binocularity is a fundamental property of primate vision. Ocular dominance describes the perceptual weight given to the inputs from the two eyes in their binocular combination. There is a distribution of sensory dominance within the normal binocular population with most subjects having balanced inputs while some are dominated by the left eye and some by the right eye. Using short-term monocular deprivation, the sensory dominance can be modulated as, under these conditions, the patched eye's contribution is strengthened. We address two questions: Is this strengthening a general effect such that it is seen for different types of sensory processing? And is the strengthening specific to pattern deprivation, or does it also occur for light deprivation? Our results show that the strengthening effect is a general finding involving a number of sensory functions, and it occurs as a result of both pattern and light deprivation.

Our visual system faces the challenging task to construct integrated visual representations from the visual input projected on our retinae. Previous research has provided mixed evidence as to whether visual awareness of the stimulus parts is required for such integration to occur. Here, we address this issue by taking a novel approach in which we combine a monocular rivalry stimulus (i.e., a bistable rotating cylinder) with binocular rivalry. The results of Experiment 1 show that in a rivalry condition, where one half of the cylinder is perceptually suppressed, significantly more perceptual switches occur that are consistent with visual integration of the whole cylinder than occur in a control condition, where only half of the cylinder is presented at a time and the presentation of the two images is physically alternated. In Experiment 2, stimulation in the observer's dominant eye was kept dominant by presenting the half cylinder in this eye at higher contrast and by surrounding it with a flickering context. Results show that the strong convexity bias that was found in a control condition, where no stimulus was presented in the suppressed eye, almost completely disappears when the unseen half is presented in the suppressed eye, indicating that both halves visually integrate and, subsequently, compete for convexity. These findings provide evidence that unseen visual information is biased towards a representation that is congruent with the current visible representation and, hence, that principles of perceptual organization also apply to parts of the visual input that remain unseen by the observer. ispartof: Journal of Vision vol:16 issue:11 ispartof: location:United States status: published

Short daily periods of binocular exposure (BE) can offset longer single daily episodes of monocular exposure (ME) to prevent the development of deprivation amblyopia. To determine whether the outcome depended upon an absolute daily amount of BE or its proportion of the daily visual exposure, daily mixed visual input of 3 different durations (3.5, 7, or 12 h) was imposed on 3 cohorts of kittens. Measurements of the visual acuity of the deprived eye at the end of mixed daily visual input revealed that the acuity of the deprived eye developed to normal values so long as the proportion of the total exposure that was binocular was 30% or more. By contrast, the development of functional ocular dominance domains in V1 revealed by optical imaging suggests that normal domains emerge with a fixed amount of daily binocular exposure. The latter result is consistent with the effects of any daily period of ME, or BE, or both, effectively saturating with a small dose so that the effects of ME of any length can be offset by a short period of BE. The different result for vision may reflect neural events at higher and/or multiple levels in the visual pathway.

When two different stimuli are presented continuously to each eye, the percept alternates over time between the left-eye stimulus and right-eye stimulus. The perceptual alternation can be slowed or even stopped, however, if the same stimuli are presented intermittently (D. A. Leopold, M. Wilke, A. Maier, & N. K. Logothetis, 2002; J. Orbach, D. Ehrlich, & H. A. Heath, 1963). A basic question is the nature of the persisting neural representation, which mediates the stabilized percept. Is it a representation for the dominant eye, for the stimulus in one eye or for a feature-integrated percept incorporating features presented separately to each eye? We define a feature-integrated percept as one constructed by the visual system but which never is presented as a stimulus. This was tested using a feature-integrated percept resulting from rivalrous, equiluminant chromatic patterns (S. W. Hong & S. K. Shevell, 2009). Measurements showed that the feature-integrated percept was stabilized by intermittent viewing: when the percept at the end of the initial viewing period was feature-integrated, this same integrated percept was seen on subsequent intermittent presentations. The results showed that the stabilized percept from these intermittent rivalrous patterns was due to a persisting neural representation at or after binocular feature integration, not to a persisting dominant eye or neural representation of a retinal stimulus.

In binocular rivalry, the visual percept alternates stochastically between two dichoptically presented stimuli. It is established that both processes related to the eye of origin and binocular, stimulus-related processes account for these fluctuations in conscious perception. Here we studied how their relative contributions vary over time. We applied brief disruptions to rivalry displays, concurrent with an optional eye swap, at varying time intervals after one stimulus became visible (dominant). We found that early in a dominance phase the dominant eye determined the percept by stabilizing its own contribution (regardless of the stimulus), with an additional yet weaker stabilizing contribution of the stimulus (regardless of the eye). Their stabilizing contributions declined in parallel with time so that late in a dominance phase the stimulus (and in some cases also the eye-based) contribution turned negative, favoring a perceptual (or ocular) switch. Our findings show that depending on the time, first proces ses related to the eye of origin and then those related to the stimulus can have a greater net influence on the stability of the conscious percept. Their co-varying change may be due to feedback from image- to eye-of-origin representations.

Using a dichoptic spatial phase combination paradigm that assesses the relative contribution that each eye makes to the binocular percept (ocular dominance), we have shown previously that 2.5 hours of patching, be it opaque or translucent, can result in a short-term enhancement of the patched eye's contribution to binocularity. This suggests that it is differential pattern deprivation, rather than the differential luminance deprivation that is driving this ocular dominance change. Here we ask what aspects of the pattern stimulation are important for ocular dominance. Observers dichoptically viewed movies of 2-3 hrs duration in which the spatial information in one eye's view had been altered (pattern deprivation). We measured each eye's contribution to the binocular percept before and after movie viewing using the dichoptic spatial phase task. Scrambling the spatial phases in one eye's view had no effect on ocular dominance, suggesting features constructed from phase-aligned components are unimportant in this regard. At the level at which these changes in dominance occurs only the Fourier amplitude spectrum is important. To verify this we show that graded changes to the magnitude of the amplitude spectrum result in graded changes in ocular dominance. To ascertain whether different parts of the amplitude spectrum are more important than others, we compared highpass with lowpass filtering and show that only the latter affects dominance. Finally, the ocular dominance change is not orientationally-dependent, suggesting the underlying mechanism is isotropic. Short-term changes in ocular dominance in adults can be obtained by altering the contrast of isotropic, high spatial frequency components seen by one eye. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.

Binocular combination of monocular inputs transpires within cortical neurons that vary in ocular dominance, owing to developmental and experiential influences that govern the strengths of innervation from the two eyes1. Accordingly, binocular experience may vary within the visual field due to regional imbalances that impact effective signal strengths from the two eyes. Rather than having a single dominant eye, people may have regional differences in sensory eye dominance (SED)2,3. Using binocular rivalry, a competitive phenomenon with dynamics sensitive to the stimulus strength of competing monocular images, we mapped patterns of SED in observers' visual fields. Observers tracked perceptual alternations while dichoptically viewing dissimilar monocular stimuli imaged at various visual field locations. RESULTS reveal that the relative predominance of the two eyes can vary widely across the visual field, with some locations promoting equal balance and others strongly biased toward one eye (see Figure). RESULTS were reliable across sessions (r=0.55, p 10% difference in predominance on both runs, r=0.70, p< 0.0001). Importantly, SED appears to function like a reduction in effective contrast for the weaker eye - the amount of balancing contrast required by the weaker eye to equate predominance for the two eyes is closely predicated by the magnitude of SED imbalance (r=0.85, p< 0.01). These results indicate that SED relies on local mechanisms that are idiosyncratic within the visual fields of typical observers. Such naturally occurring variability in the effective contrast contributed by the two eyes may have widespread impact on binocular functions such as stereopsis, where contrast imbalances produce impaired stereoacuity. Within a subset of observers tested, stereopsis is indeed impaired in regions of the visual field with pronounced SED. Continuing investigations are exploring the impact of regional inter-ocular contrast variations on other binocular functions. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015. Language: en

Binocular vision disorders (BVD) are quite common in subjects with cerebellar dysfunctions. Also individuals with strabismus often suffer from many motor deficits, such as impaired body balance and walking. It is known that the cerebellum is necessary to maintain proper body posture but also to learn motor skills. It is conceivable that subjects with BVD would also have deficits in procedural (implicit) motor learning, one of the primary cerebellar functions. The primary aim of this study was to explore motor learning abilities in subjects with BVD (strabismic group, SG). Modified versions of a single reaction time task were used in the scheme proposed by Molinari et al. in 1997. A set of three different tasks (Experiment 1) were performed under dominant eye viewing to investigate (a) procedural (implicit) motor learning, (b) declarative (explicit) learning, and (c) simple stimulus-response associative learning. Because each task examined different aspects of motor learning abilities, it could be revealed which motor learning pathway is impaired in SG. Results showed that the SG had slower reaction times in all three tasks and demonstrated poor implicit motor learning ability compared to controls. To verify if these results were caused by reduced binocular vision or cerebellar deficits, per se, a nonstrabismic binocular anomalies group (NSG) was introduced, and all the same tests were performed (Experiment 2). These results revealed that there were no differences between the NSG and the control group with good binocularity. To conclude, the poor procedural learning ability and slower reaction times in strabismic subjects should not be explained as an effect of incomplete binocular vision that influences the maturity of the visual cortex and transformation of visual information into a motor program because binocular anomaly individuals without strabismus have motor learning abilities close to the controls. Some cerebellar deficits appear to be the origin of observed anomalies.

Abnormal early visual experience often leads to poor vision, a condition called amblyopia. Two recent approaches to treating amblyopia include binocular therapies and intensive visual training. These reflect the emerging view that amblyopia is a binocular deficit caused by increased neural noise and poor signal-in-noise integration. Most perceptual learning studies have used monocular training; however, a recent study has shown that binocular training is effective for improving acuity in adult human amblyopes. We used an animal model of amblyopia, based on monocular deprivation, to compare the effect of binocular training either during or after the critical period for ocular dominance plasticity (early binocular training vs. late binocular training). We used a high-contrast, orientation-in-noise stimulus to drive the visual cortex because neurophysiological findings suggest that binocular training may allow the nondeprived eye to teach the deprived eye's circuits to function. We found that both early and late binocular training promoted good visual recovery. Surprisingly, we found that monocular deprivation caused a permanent deficit in the vision of both eyes, which became evident only as a sleeper effect following many weeks of visual training.

When the visual system is confronted with incompatible images in the same part of the visual field, the conscious percept switches back and forth between the rivaling stimuli. Such spontaneous flips provide important clues to the neuronal basis for visual awareness. The general idea is that two representations compete for dominance in a process of mutual inhibition, in which adaptation shifts the balance to and fro. The inherent nonlinear nature of the rivalrous flip-flop and its stochastic behavior, however, made it impossible to disentangle inhibition and adaptation. Here we report a general method to measure the time course, and asymmetries, of mechanisms involved in perceptual rivalry. Supported by model simulations, we show the dynamics of opponent interactions between mutual inhibition and adaptation. The findings not only provide new insight into the mechanism underlying rivalry but also offer new opportunities to study and compare a wide range of bistable processes in the brain and their relation to visual awareness.

The binocular advantage in reading performance is typically small. On the other hand research shows binocular reading to be remarkably robust to degraded stimulus properties. We hypothesized that this robustness may stem from an increasing binocular contribution. The main objective was to compare monocular and binocular performance at different stimulus contrasts and assess the level of binocular superiority. A secondary objective was to assess any asymmetry in performance related to ocular dominance. In a balanced repeated measures experiment 18 subjects read texts at three levels of contrast monocularly and binocularly while their eye movements were recorded. The binocular advantage increased with reduced contrast producing a 7% slower monocular reading at 40% contrast, 9% slower at 20% contrast, and 21% slower at 10% contrast. A statistically significant interaction effect was found in fixation duration displaying a more adverse effect in the monocular condition at lowest contrast. No significant effects of ocular dominance were observed. The outcome suggests that binocularity contributes increasingly to reading performance as stimulus contrast decreases. The strongest difference between monocular and binocular performance was due to fixation duration. The findings may pose a clinical point that it may be necessary to consider tests at different contrast levels when estimating reading performance.

Factors such as strabismus or anisometropia during infancy can disrupt normal visual development and result in amblyopia, characterized by reduced visual function in an otherwise healthy eye and often associated with persistent suppression of inputs from the amblyopic eye by those from the dominant eye. It has become evident from fMRI studies that the cortical response to stimulation of the amblyopic eye is also affected. We were interested to compare the hemodynamic response function (HRF) of early visual cortex to amblyopic vs. dominant eye stimulation. In the first experiment, we found that stimulation of the amblyopic eye resulted in a signal that was both attenuated and delayed in its time to peak. We postulated that this delay may be due to suppressive effects of the dominant eye and, in our second experiment, measured the cortical response of amblyopic eye stimulation under two conditions--where the dominant eye was open and seeing a static pattern (high suppression) or where the dominant eye was patched and closed (low suppression). We found that the HRF in response to amblyopic eye stimulation depended on whether the dominant eye was open. This effect was manifested as both a delayed HRF under the suppressed condition and an amplitude reduction.

When the two eyes view incompatible images that subtend the entire visual field, perception alternates between the two images unpredictably: at seemingly random times and locations, observers experience sudden changes in the awareness of the unchanging visual stimulation. Here we focus on the very first spontaneous breakout from the very first suppression phase after onset of the two eyes' competing whole-field stimuli. We call such spontaneous local breakout an "initial percept-switch nucleation." We employed homogeneous visual input to examine where, and how, spontaneous local initial percept-switch nucleations originate, demonstrating that their spatial distribution contains locally random inhomogeneities, which are eye- and observer-dependent. We were able to predict the occurrence probability of the percept nucleations by adaptation buildup of the neurons associated with the representation of one eye's image. Intriguingly, the neuronal processes related to both cross-inhibition and local eye dominance could not predict nucleation probability; this is because nucleation inhomogeneity appeared to be different from another previously reported local inhomogeneity known as "onset bias" signifying the local first dominance-choice inhomogeneity upon stimulus onset. Collectively, we reveal a governing role of local adaptation in the neurons associated with early visual processing of one eye's image, in the origination of new phases in awareness.

We studied the role of eye dominance in non-rivalry conditions, testing dichoptic visual search and comparing performance with target presented to the dominant or non-dominant eye. Using red–green glasses, subjects viewed an array of green and red lines of uniform orientation, with a differently oriented target line present on half the trials. Performance was significantly better when the dominant eye saw the target, especially when the opposite eye saw the distractors. This effect was reduced when only nearest-neighbor surrounding distractors were homogeneous. We conclude that the dominant eye has priority in visual processing, perhaps including inhibition of non-dominant eye representations.