Mesoscale cortical mechanisms of perceptual conflict resolution in binocular rivalry

The study addressed how our brain resolves conflicts in sensory input to generate conscious perception using high-resolution 7T fMRI, by investigating column- and layer-specific activity in cortical and subcortical regions in humans during binocular rivalry.

Results showed that eye-specific rivalry arises from interocular inhibition between adjacent ocular dominance columns in the superficial layers of the primary visual cortex (V1), but not between ocular layers of the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) of the thalamus. Eye-specific feedback from the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) plays an active role in biasing and synchronizing local competitions in V1 into perceptually coherent representations, even without awareness of the eye-of-origin information.