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Abstract

Multistable perception is generally considered to be the inevitable consequence of prolonged inspection of ambiguous displays. We have recently demonstrated that in human observers perceptual alternation can be strongly retarded, and in some cases nearly eliminated, when the inducing pattern is perceived intermittently rather than continuously (Leopold et al., Nat. Neurosci. 2002). The present study extends these results to the macaque monkey (macaca mulatta), and examines what types of neural mechanisms might underlie such stabilization.
We recorded broad-band signals with multiple electrodes from the early visual areas of a rhesus monkey trained to report his percepts during perceptual rivalry. Ambiguous patterns were presented intermittently with “on” and “off” periods each lasting 1-5 seconds. Given our previous finding that under these conditions perception of such patterns can become stable, and a perceptual configuration can predominate over many subsequent presentations, we examined whether neural activity during the blank periods (i.e. delay-period activity) might reflect such a prolonged perceptual bias. We will present our initial results on this topic, with emphasis on how immediate perceptual history might affect subsequent activity in the early visual areas.