BINOCULAR RIVALRY, PERCEPTUAL FILLING-IN AND THEIR INTERACTIONS: A Mechanistic Approach to Understanding the Neural Basis of Perception

Visual perception relies on both selective and constructive perceptual processes. For example, binocular rivalry leads to the selective perception of one of two competing monocular stimuli, whereas visual phantom formation leads to perceptual filling-in of a large gap between two collinearly aligned gratings. This book explores the role of perceptual and attentional mechanisms in binocular rivalry and perceptual filling-in, and investigates the neural interactions between rivalry and filling-in to gain new insights into the nature of these perceptual phenomena. These studies provide compelling new evidence suggesting that the neural mechanisms underlying selective perception and constructive perception both operate at early stages of visual processing, and that dynamic interactions can take place between these mechanisms at these same early sites. Moreover, the mechanistic approach, which this book takes to study visual awareness, is more promising to help us understand how consciousness arises as a consequence of brain activity than merely searching for the neural correlates of consciousness.

Originally from China, Ming Meng received his Ph.D. in Psychology from Princeton University. His research interests focus on how the brain extracts order from, and imposes order upon, complex visual information. He is presently a Post-doc Research Associate studying Brain & Cognitive Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.