Regulating the Access to Awareness: Brain Activity Related to Probe-related and Spontaneous Reversals in Binocular Rivalry.
Journal of cognitive neuroscience June 1, 2017 Brian A Metzger, Kyle E Mathewson, Evelina Tapia et al.
The P3b brain wave, previously linked to visual awareness, is associated with updates in conscious perception rather than with processing external stimuli themselves. In a binocular rivalry experiment, participants viewed competing images, one per eye, and brief probes were flashed over the dominant or suppressed image. The timing of the P3b wave corresponded to when participants reported a perceptual switch, not to when the probe occurred. This supports the idea that P3b signals a change in what is consciously perceived. The amplitude of an earlier wave, the P1, predicted how quickly a perceptual reversal happened, and the amplitude of the P3b predicted the duration of a mixed-percept stage.