CogNeuro Consolider Series: Jochen Braun (University of Magdeburg)

Multi-stable perception and its dependence on history

Abstract:

Multi-stable perception is not the "memoryless" process as which it was long regarded.  Recent psychophysical studies reveal both stabilizing and destabilizing effects of perceptual history: the recent experience of a particular percept makes it both more likely (in the short run) and less likely (in the long run) to experience the same percept again.   While the destabilizing effect presumably reflects some form of adaptation (either neuronal or synaptic),  the neural substrate of the stabilizing effect remains mysterious.   Surprisingly, the destabilizing effect does not seem to actually cause perceptual reversals.  Rather, reversals appear to be noise-driven.   The stabilizing effect builds up in seconds, decays in minutes, and is robust to perceptual reversals.  Our current working model of multi-stable perception involves competing processes of stochastic integration at several levels of neural representation.