Journal
JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE
Volume 36, Issue 11, Pages 3231-3242Publisher
SOC NEUROSCIENCE
DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3660-15.2016
Keywords
anesthetized; attention; binocular rivalry; ocular dominance; optical imaging; striate cortex
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Funding
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [31371111, 31530029]
- Hundred Talent Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
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Two incongruent images viewed by the two eyes cause binocular rivalry, during which observers perceive continuous alternations between these two visual images. Previous studies in both humans and monkeys have shown that the primary visual cortex (V1) plays a critical role in the rivalry perception. However, it is unclear whether the rivalry activity observed in V1 relies on conscious influences. Here, we examine the responses of V1 in monkeys under general anesthesia. With intrinsic signal optical imaging and single-trial analysis, alternating activation of ocular dominance columns in V1 was observed during binocularly incongruent stimulation. Left-and right-eye columns exhibited counterphase activation, which were modulated by stimulus features in ways similar to those found in conscious human observers. These observations indicated that binocular rivalry occurs in V1 without consciousness, suggesting that the low-level automatic mechanisms play a more important role than previously believed in handling visual ambiguities.
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