The Role of Primary Visual Cortex (V1) in Perceptual Suppression

When two incongruent stimuli are presented simultaneously at corresponding retinal locations in the two eyes, one typically experiences a perceptual alternation of the two stimuli; a phenomenon known as binocular rivalry. Binocular flash suppression (BFS) is a variant of binocular rivalry and refers to the sudden and persistent perceptual suppression resulting when two rivalrous patterns are presented dichoptically and asynchronously to the two eyes. Under these conditions, the latter pattern dominates perceptually over the first. The binocular flash suppression paradigm ensures excellent control over the subject’s perceptual state without the need for subjective reports which involve decision making, action preparation and action execution. The role of primary visual cortex (V1) in perceptual suppression remains controversial. In this study, we assessed quantitatively the effects of perceptual suppression on neural activity in V1 of the macaque using BFS. We have analyzed both the spiking activity of a large number of single neurons (SUA) and different frequency bands of the local field potentials (LFPs). The main result for SUA was that only a small minority (~20) modulates in consonance with the perceptual suppression of static orientation gratings. Furthermore, the magnitude of the perceptual effect was small (~15) in comparison to the sensory preference of the neurons. LFPs showed comparable percentages. The amplitude of LFP modulations was independent of frequency although gamma frequencies showed greater selectivity during physical alternation of the stimuli. Our results provide evidence against the hypothesis that competition is happening at the level of monocular neurons at the input layers of primary visual cortex