Dataset Information

Hearing (rivaling) lips and seeing voices: how audiovisual interactions modulate perceptual stabilization in binocular rivalry.

ABSTRACT: In binocular rivalry (BR), sensory input remains the same yet subjective experience fluctuates irremediably between two mutually exclusive representations. We investigated the perceptual stabilization effect of an additional sound on the BR dynamics using speech stimuli known to involve robust audiovisual (AV) interactions at several cortical levels. Subjects sensitive to the McGurk effect were presented looping videos of rivaling faces uttering /aba/ and /aga/, respectively, while synchronously hearing the voice /aba/. They reported continuously the dominant percept, either observing passively or trying actively to promote one of the faces. The few studies that investigated the influence of information from an external modality on perceptual competition reported results that seem at first sight inconsistent. Since these differences could stem from how well the modalities matched, we addressed this by comparing two levels of AV congruence: real (/aba/ viseme) vs. illusory (/aga/ viseme producing the /ada/ McGurk fusion). First, adding the voice /aba/ stabilized both real and illusory congruent lips percept. Second, real congruence of the added voice improved volitional control whereas illusory congruence did not, suggesting a graded contribution to the top-down sensitivity control of selective attention. In conclusion, a congruent sound enhanced considerably attentional control over the perceptual outcome selection; however, differences between passive stabilization and active control according to AV congruency suggest these are governed by two distinct mechanisms. Based on existing theoretical models of BR, selective attention and AV interaction in speech perception, we provide a general interpretation of our findings.

SUBMITTER: Vidal M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4154468 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Hearing (rivaling) lips and seeing voices: how audiovisual interactions modulate perceptual stabilization in binocular rivalry.

Vidal Manuel M Barrès Victor V

Frontiers in human neuroscience 20140904

In binocular rivalry (BR), sensory input remains the same yet subjective experience fluctuates irremediably between two mutually exclusive representations. We investigated the perceptual stabilization effect of an additional sound on the BR dynamics using speech stimuli known to involve robust audiovisual (AV) interactions at several cortical levels. Subjects sensitive to the McGurk effect were presented looping videos of rivaling faces uttering /aba/ and /aga/, respectively, while synchronously ...[more]

PMID: 25237302

Similar Datasets

Project description:Binocular rivalry is a classic experimental tool to probe the neural machinery of perceptual awareness. During rivalry, perception alternates between the two eyes, and the ebb and flow of perception is modeled to rely on the strength of inhibitory interactions between competitive neuronal populations in visual cortex. As a result, rivalry has been suggested as a noninvasive perceptual marker of inhibitory signaling in visual cortex, and its putative disturbance in psychiatric conditions, including autism. Yet, direct evidence causally implicating inhibitory signaling in the dynamics of binocular rivalry is currently lacking. We previously found that people with higher GABA levels in visual cortex, measured using magnetic resonance spectroscopy, have stronger perceptual suppression during rivalry. Here, we present direct causal tests of the impact of GABAergic inhibition on rivalry dynamics, and the contribution of specific GABA receptors to these dynamics. In a crossover pharmacological design with male and female adult participants, we found that drugs that modulate the two dominant GABA receptor types in the brain, GABAA (clobazam) and GABAB (arbaclofen), increase perceptual suppression during rivalry relative to a placebo. Crucially, these results could not be explained by changes in reaction times or response criteria, as determined through rivalry simulation trials, suggesting a direct and specific influence of GABA on perceptual suppression. A full replication study of the GABAB modulator reinforces these findings. These results provide causal evidence for a link between the strength of inhibition in the brain and perceptual suppression during rivalry and have implications for psychiatric conditions including autism.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT How does the brain accomplish perceptual gating? Here we use a direct and causal pharmacological manipulation to present insight into the neural machinery of a classic illusion of perceptual awareness: binocular rivalry. We show that drugs that increase GABAergic inhibition in the brain, clobazam (GABAA modulator) and arbaclofen (GABAB modulator), increase perceptual suppression during rivalry relative to a placebo. These results present the first causal link between GABAergic inhibition and binocular rivalry in humans, complementing classic models of binocular rivalry, and have implications for our understanding of psychiatric conditions, such as autism, where binocular rivalry is posited as a behavioral marker of disruptions in inhibitory signaling in the brain.

Project description:Binocular rivalry is a phenomenon in which perception spontaneously shifts between two different images that are dichoptically presented to the viewer. By elucidating the cortical networks responsible for these stochastic fluctuations in perception, we can potentially learn much about the neural correlates of visual awareness. We obtained concurrent EEG-fMRI data for a group of 20 healthy human subjects during the continuous presentation of dichoptic visual stimuli. The two eyes' images were tagged with different temporal frequencies so that eye specific steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) signals could be extracted from the EEG data for direct comparison with changes in fMRI BOLD activity associated with binocular rivalry. We additionally included a smooth replay condition that emulated the perceptual transitions experienced during binocular rivalry as a control stimulus. We evaluated a novel SSVEP-informed fMRI analysis in this study in order to delineate the temporal dynamics of rivalry-related BOLD activity from both an electrophysiological and behavioral perspective. In this manner, we assessed BOLD activity during rivalry that was directly correlated with peaks and crosses of the two rivaling, frequency-tagged SSVEP signals, for comparison with BOLD activity associated with subject reported perceptual transitions. Our findings point to a critical role of a right lateralized fronto-parietal network in the processing of bistable stimuli, given that BOLD activity in the right superior/inferior parietal lobules was significantly elevated throughout binocular rivalry and in particular during perceptual transitions, compared with the replay condition. Based on the SSVEP-informed analysis, rivalry was further associated with significantly enhanced BOLD suppression in the posterior mid-cingulate cortex during perceptual transitions, compared with SSVEP crosses. Overall, this work points to a careful interplay between early visual areas, the right posterior parietal cortex and the mid-cingulate cortex in mediating the spontaneous perceptual changes associated with binocular rivalry and has significant implications for future multimodal imaging studies of perception and awareness.

Dataset Information

Hearing (rivaling) lips and seeing voices: how audiovisual interactions modulate perceptual stabilization in binocular rivalry.

Publications

Hearing (rivaling) lips and seeing voices: how audiovisual interactions modulate perceptual stabilization in binocular rivalry.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets