Cortical Dynamics Underlying Waves of Perceptual Dominance: Gestalt Psychology Vindicated

During the first part of the last century the Gestalt psychologists proposed that the dynamics evident in visual perception were attributable to ever-changing electrical potentials within topograpically organized brain fields (Kohler, 1920). Dynamic field theory, as it was called, was subsequently discredited on grounds that the brain does not comprise a field but, instead, a richly interconnected network of discrete computing elements. But even within this modern conceptualization of brain function, we still face the challenge of explaining the phenomena that inspired the Gestalt psychologists: the nature of the medium does not change the fact that perception is dynamic in space and in time. To tackle the challenge of relating perceptual and cortical dynamics, my colleagues, Sang-Hun Lee and David Heeger, and I have been studying the phenomenon of binocular rivalry together with brain imaging using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMR). Our findings to date reveal the existence of waves of cortical activity that travel across the retinotopic map in V1, in correspondence with the subjective perception of spreading waves of dominance during binocular rivalry. This brief paper summarizes some of our initial findings.