Independent Binocular Rivalry Processes for Motion and Form

During binocular rivalry, conflicting monocular images undergo alternating suppression. This study explores rivalry suppression by probing visual sensitivity during rivalry with various probe stimuli. When two faces engage in rivalry, sensitivity to face probes is reduced 4-fold during suppression. Rivaling global motions also rivaled very deeply when probed with a global motion. However, in a surprising finding, sensitivity to face probes is completely unimpaired during global motion rivalry, and motion sensitivity is unimpaired during face rivalry. This suggests that rivalry suppression is localized to the neurons representing the image conflict, which means that probes of a different kind suffer no suppression. Sensibly, this would leave visual processes not involved in rivalry free to function normally.