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It is debated whether different forms of bistable perception result from common or separate neural mechanisms. Binocular rivalry involves perceptual alternations between competing monocular images, whereas ambiguous figures such as the Necker cube lead to alternations between two possible pictorial interpretations. Previous studies have shown that observers can voluntarily control the alternation rate of both rivalry and Necker cube reversal, perhaps suggesting that bistable perception results from a common mechanism of top-down selection. However, according to the biased competition model of selective attention, attention should be able to enhance the attended percept and suppress the unattended percept. Here, we investigated selective attentional modulation of dominance durations in bistable perception. Observers consistently showed much weaker selective attentional control for rivalry than for Necker cube reversal, even for rivalry displays that maximized the opportunities for feature-, object-, or space-based attentional selection. In contrast, nonselective control of alternation rate was comparably strong for both forms of bistable perception and corresponded poorly with estimates of selective attentional control. Our results support the notion that binocular rivalry involves a more automatic, stimulus-driven form of visual competition than Necker cube reversal, and as a consequence, is less easily biased by selective attention.

Neuronal oscillations are ubiquitous in the brain and contribute to perception and attention. However, most associated evidence derives from post hoc correlations between brain dynamics and behavior. Although a few recent studies demonstrate rhythms in behavior, it remains largely unknown whether behavioral performances manifest spectrotemporal dynamics in a neurophysiologically relevant manner (e.g., the temporal modulation of ongoing oscillations, the cross-frequency coupling). To investigate the issue, we examined fine spectrotemporal dynamics of behavioral time courses in a large sample of human participants (n ϭ 49), by taking a high time-resolved psychophysical measurement in a precuing attentional task. We observed compelling dynamic oscillatory patterns directly in behavior. First, typical attentional effects are demonstrated in low-pass (0 -2 Hz) filtered time courses of behavioral responses. Second, an uninformative peripheral cue elicits recurring ␣-band (8 -20 Hz) pulses in behavioral performances, and the elicited ␣ pulses for cued and uncued conditions are in a temporally alternating relationship. Finally, ongoing ␣-band power is phase locked to ongoing -bands (3-5 Hz) in behavioral time courses. Our findings constitute manifestation of oscillations at physiologically relevant rhythms and powerphase locking, as widely observed in neurophysiological recordings, in behavior. The findings suggest that behavioral performance actually consists of rich dynamic information and may reflect underlying neuronal oscillatory substrates. Our data also speak to a neural mechanism for item attention based on successive cycles () of a sequential attentional sampling (␣) process.

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Are visual face processing mechanisms the same in the left and right cerebral hemispheres? The possibility of such 'duplicated processing' seems puzzling in terms of neural resource usage, and we currently lack a precise characterization of the lateral differences in face processing. To address this need, we have undertaken a three-pronged approach. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we assessed cortical sensitivity to facial semblance, the modulatory effects of context and temporal response dynamics. Results on all three fronts revealed systematic hemispheric differences. We found that: (i) activation patterns in the left fusiform gyrus correlate with image-level face-semblance, while those in the right correlate with categorical face/non-face judgements. (ii) Context exerts significant excitatory/inhibitory influence in the left, but has limited effect on the right. (iii) Face-selectivity persists in the right even after activity on the left has returned to baseline. These results provide important clues regarding the functional architecture of face processing, suggesting that the left hemisphere is involved in processing 'low-level' face semblance, and perhaps is a precursor to categorical 'deep' analyses on the right.

What aspects of facial information do we use to recognize individuals? One way to address this fundamental question is to study image transformations that compromise facial recognizability. The goal would be to identify factors that underlie the recognition decrement and, by extension, are likely constituents of facial encoding. To this end, we focus here on the contrast negation transformation. Contrast negated faces are remarkably difficult to recognize for reasons that are currently unclear. The dominant proposals so far are based either on negative faces' seemingly unusual pigmentation, or incorrectly computed 3D shape. Both of these explanations have been challenged by recent results. Here, we propose an alternative account based on 2D ordinal relationships, which encode local contrast polarity between a few regions of the face. Using a novel set of facial stimuli that incorporate both positive and negative contrast, we demonstrate that ordinal relationships around the eyes are major determinants of facial recognizability. Our behavioral studies suggest that destruction of these relationships in negatives likely underlies the observed recognition impairments, and our neuro-imaging data show that these relationships strongly modulate brain responses to facial images. Besides offering a potential explanation for why negative faces are hard to recognize, these results have implications for the representational vocabulary the visual system uses to encode faces.contrast negation ͉ face perception ͉ fMRI ͉ neural representation ͉ object recognition I n principle, a contrast negated image is exactly as informative as its positive counterpart; negation perfectly preserves an image's 2D geometric and spectral structure. However, as anyone who has had to search through a roll of negatives for a snapshot of a particular person knows, this simple operation has dramatically adverse consequences on our ability to identify faces, as illustrated in Fig. 1 (1-6). Exploring the causes of this phenomenon is important for understanding the broader issue of the nature of information the visual system uses for face identification.Several researchers have hypothesized that negated face-images are hard to recognize because of the unnatural shading cues in negatives, which compromise shape from shading processes (7-11). The resulting problems in recovering veridical 3D facial shape are believed to impair recognition performance. Although plausible, it is unclear whether this explanation is a sufficient one, especially in light of experimental results showing preserved recognition performance in the absence of shading gradients (12), and theories of face recognition that are based on the use of 2D intensity patterns rather than recovered 3D shapes (13,14). Another prominent hypothesis is that negation causes faces to have unusual pigmentation (15, 16). However, the adequacy of this ''pigmentation hypothesis'' has been challenged by data showing that hue negation, which also results in unnatural pigmentation (making the entire face l...

A series of mesoporous MnOx−CeO2 binary oxide catalysts with high specific surface areas were prepared by surfactant-assisted precipitation. The CO and C3H8 oxidation reactions were used as model reactions to evaluate their catalytic performance. The techniques of N2 adsorption/desorption, XRD, XPS, TPR, TPO, TPD, and in situ DRIFTS were employed for catalyst characterization. It is found that the activity for CO and C3H8 oxidation of the catalysts exhibits a volcano-type behavior with the increase of Mn content. The catalyst with a Mn/Ce ratio of 4/6, possessing a high specific surface area of 215 m2/g, exhibits the best catalytic activity, which is related not only to its highest reducibility and oxygen-activation ability, as revealed by TPR and TPO, but also to the formation of more active oxygen species on the MnOx−CeO2 interface as identified by TPD. After the addition of a small amount of Pd to the MnOx−CeO2 catalyst, its activity for CO oxidation is greatly enhanced, due to the acceleration of gas-phase oxygen activation and transferring via spillover. However, the activity for C3H8 oxidation is hardly promoted due to the different reaction pathways for CO and C3H8 oxidation. For CO oxidation, the gas-phase oxygen activated by Pd can directly react with the adsorbed CO to form CO2, while, for C3H8 oxidation, which takes place at a much higher temperature than CO oxidation, the C−H bond activation and cleavage may be mainly driven by the active oxygen species on the interface between MnOx and CeO2. The addition of Pd shows little effect on the active interface oxygen species, so no promotion upon C3H8 oxidation is observed.

Nanostructured Co 3 O 4 -CeO 2 and CuO-CeO 2 catalysts with the specific surface areas exceeding 100 m 2 g -1 were synthesized by a surfactant-templated method. The catalytic performance of these catalysts was investigated using the total oxidation of CO and C 3 H 8 as model reactions. The results show that the Co 3 O 4 -CeO 2 catalysts are less active for CO oxidation but are more active for C 3 H 8 oxidation as compared with the CuO-CeO 2 catalysts. Moreover, the Co 3 O 4 -CeO 2 catalysts exhibit a volcano-type performance for CO oxidation with the cobalt content increasing. The in situ diffuse reflectance infrared spectroscopy (DRIFTS) study shows that CO is adsorbed mainly as carbonyl (2106 cm -1 ) and bidentate carbonate (1568 and 1281 cm -1 ) on CuO-CeO 2 , and only as bidentate carbonate (1591 and 1268 cm -1 ) on Co 3 O 4 -CeO 2 . On the basis of the results of structural characterization, redox properties, and in situ DRIFTS study, the active sites for CO and C 3 H 8 oxidation are identified, respectively. Carbon monoxide oxidation preferentially occurs at the interface between CeO 2 and CuO or Co 3 O 4 , whereas propane oxidation takes place on the neighboring surface lattice oxygen sites in CuO or Co 3 O 4 crystallites. The different requirements of the active sites are determined by the different reaction mechanisms and the rate-determining steps. It is also found that the introduction of a small amount of Pd to Co 3 O 4 -CeO 2 can remarkably promote the CO oxidation activity, but it hardly enhanced the C 3 H 8 oxidation activity of the catalyst. The different reaction mechanisms, on molecular level, are identified and discussed in detail.