Rivalry Onset in and around the Fovea: The Role of Visual Field Location and Eye Dominance on Perceptual Dominance Bias

Abstract

When dissimilar images are presented to each eye, the images will alternate every few seconds in a phenomenon known as binocular rivalry. Recent research has found evidence of a bias towards one image at the initial ‘onset’ period of rivalry that varies across the peripheral visual field. To determine the role that visual field location plays in and around the fovea at onset, trained observers were presented small orthogonal achromatic grating patches at various locations across the central 3° of visual space for 1-s and 60-s intervals. Results reveal stronger bias at onset than during continuous rivalry, and evidence of temporal hemifield dominance across observers, however, the nature of the hemifield effects differed between individuals and interacted with overall eye dominance. Despite using small grating patches, a high proportion of mixed percept was still reported, with more mixed percept at onset along the vertical midline, in general, and in increasing proportions with eccentricity in the lateral hemifields. Results show that even within the foveal range, onset rivalry bias varies across visual space, and differs in degree and sensitivity to biases in average dominance over continuous viewing.

Exercise alone impacts short-term adult visual neuroplasticity in a monocular deprivation paradigm

“…Figure 2 shows no effect of any invention on the time to first switch, whereas the patching intervention clearly shifted dominance toward the patched eye during sustained rivalry (Figure 4). Although research continues to highlight the idiosyncratic nature of onset rivalry, the current results are consistent with previous studies emphasizing the role of eye dominance, luminance, and color in determining onset dominance compared with higher level factors (Dieter, Sy, & Blake, 2017;Stanley, Forte, & Carter, 2019;. As the occlusion procedure involved a translucent patch that degraded form perception but largely preserved luminance and color, the occlusion procedure may have spared the neural signaling processes that are most relevant to the period of onset rivalry.…”

A nasal visual field advantage in interocular competition

“…Considering first the research most comparable to our work here (i.e., investigating the nasotemporal asymmetry in IOC), we find little consensus in the handful of studies dedicated to this line of investigation. Whereas some studies show an advantage for the nasal VHF 25 – 27 , other studies showed either no, mixed, or even opposite results regarding the dominance of nasally versus temporally presented stimuli in IOC 28 – 30 , 41 , 42 . Regardless, the current study provides decisive results as we show a robust advantage for the nasal VHF during IOC evoked by b-CFS, across 300 + observers in five independent datasets.…”

“…raise the question whether interocular competitive strength is also dependent on the VHF to which the competing stimuli are presented. Not many studies examined VHF asymmetries in IOC, and the studies which have, have provided conflicting results: some studies reported an enhanced performance for stimuli in nasal VHF locations 25 – 27 while others suggested little effect of VHF location or even an advantage for stimuli in temporal VHF locations 28 – 30 . The studies that observed VHF asymmetries in IOC (in either direction) do not elaborate much on potential explanations for the VHF asymmetry.…”

Neural Correlates of Sensory Eye Dominance in Human Visual White Matter Tracts

“…We weighted the differences as it is well possible for individual tract/radiation differences to scale with overall tissue properties. Finally, we elected to take the “absolute” asymmetries, as the signage of the perceptual manifestation of SED is not intuitive, especially as it relates to physiological asymmetries ( Dieter and Blake, 2015 ; Stanley et al, 2019 ). We arrive at a metric of the OR then, that allows us to gauge correlates of the degree of eye dominance.…”