Neural Correlates of Binocular Rivalry

我们在日常生活中看到的典型视觉场景是杂乱的，包含许多无法同时处理的项目。 只有少数视觉对象被选择用于进一步处理并达到意识水平。 但是意识和大脑中的神经活动之间的关系是什么呢？ 意识知觉的主观性给神经科学家在研究意识的神经关联时带来了严重的问题。 然而，近年来，已经开发了一些范式，有望克服其中一些问题。 在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，普林斯顿大学的Sabine Kastner博士和他的同事将使用双目竞争范式研究意识感知的神经相关性。 在双眼竞争中，两个不相容的刺激（例如一张脸和一所房子）被呈现给两只眼睛，这导致了对意识感知的竞争，使得一次只有一个图像是可见的，而另一个图像被抑制而无法意识到。 因此，观众要么看到脸，要么看到房子，但不能同时看到两者。 由于观察者的知觉经验随着时间的推移而变化，而视网膜上的物理刺激保持不变，双目竞争提供了一个有趣的范式来研究视觉意识的神经基础。 Kastner博士将使用各种竞争性刺激对人类和猴子进行非侵入性脑功能成像研究。 这些研究将确定在视觉信息的有意识感知过程中参与的大脑网络。 人类和猴子大脑激活的比较将提供关于意识感知的重要见解。 这项工作将导致更好地理解认知神经科学中最基本的问题之一，即有意识感知的神经基质。 这些研究的结果也可能对神经科学以外的其他领域（如哲学）感兴趣。 人类和猴子神经成像的结合仅在世界上少数实验室中进行，并为各级教育的学员提供了独特的培训机会，包括本科生和研究生。 将通过出版物、公开讲座和公共数据库向科学界和一般公众广泛传播成果。

The typical visual scenes that we view in everyday life are cluttered and contain numerous items that cannot all be processed at the same time. Only few visual objects are selected for further processing and reach the level of awareness. But what is the relationship between awareness and neural activity in the brain? The subjective nature of conscious perception has posed a serious problem to neuroscientists in approaching the study of the neural correlates of consciousness. However, in recent years, a few paradigms have been developed that promise to overcome some of these issues. With support of the National Science Foundation, Dr. Sabine Kastner and colleagues at Princeton University will study neural correlates of conscious perception using a binocular rivalry paradigm. In binocular rivalry, two incompatible stimuli (e.g. a face and a house) are presented to the two eyes, which leads to a competition for conscious perception such that only one image is visible at a time while the other one is suppressed from awareness. As a result, viewers perceive either the face or the house, but not both. Because the viewers' perceptual experiences change over time while the physical stimulus on the retina remains constant, binocular rivalry provides an intriguing paradigm to study the neural basis of visual awareness. Dr. Kastner will perform non-invasive functional brain imaging studies in humans and monkeys using a variety of rivalrous stimuli. These studies will identify the brain networks that are engaged during the conscious perception of visual information. The comparison of brain activations in humans and monkeys will provide important insights regarding conscious perception. This work will result in a better understanding of one of the most fundamental issues in cognitive neuroscience, the neural substrates underlying conscious perception. The results of these studies may also be of interest to other fields outside neuroscience such as philosophy. The combination of neuroimaging in humans and monkeys is performed only in few laboratories in the world and offers a unique training opportunity for trainees at all levels of education, including undergraduate and graduate students. Results will be broadly disseminated through publications, public lectures and public databases to scientific as well as general public audiences.