The variety of perceptual transitions during binocular rivalry

Studies involving MR spectroscopy, alcohol intake and neurpsychiatric disorders such as autism and ADHD have recently linked perceptual transitions during binocular rivalry to inhibition in the visual system. In these studies transitions are regarded as a single, clearly defined perceptual event. Here, we questioned this assumption by systematically investigating perceptual transitions during binocular rivalry in healthy individuals. We found that most observes perceive at least four transition categories when viewing orthogonal gratings and three categories when viewing a face-house images. In addition, we observed that manipulating the contrast of gratings affects not only the duration of transitions, but also the relative frequency of different transition types. Our study for the first time confirms that perceptual transitions in binocular rivalry are heterogeneous and points towards the necessity to distinguish between different transition types in future binocular rivalry studies