Generalized Flash Suppression of Salient Visual Targets

A pattern of light striking the retina of an alert observer is normally readily perceived. While a handful of conditions exist in which even salient visual stimuli can be rendered invisible, the mechanisms underlying such suppression remain poorly understood. Here, we describe experiments using a novel stimulation sequence that gives rise to the sudden and reliable subjective disappearance of a wide range of visual patterns. We found that a parafoveal target immediately vanished from perception following the abrupt onset of a surrounding texture. The probability of disappearance was influenced by the ocular configuration of the target and surround, as well as their spatial separation. In addition, suppression was critically dependent upon several hundred milliseconds of stimulus-specific adaptation. These findings demonstrate that the all-or-none disappearance of a salient visual target, which is reminiscent of a high-level selection process, is inextricably linked to topographic stimulus representations, presumably in the early visual cortex.