Binocular rivalry

This chapter will first examine the neural circuitry necessary to generate binocular rivalry. Such neural circuits entail both neural cooperation within and competition between monocular images. Evidence will also be presented that rivalry must occur at multiple hierarchic levels in the visual system in order to explain relevant data. In light of this, the suggestion that rivalry can elucidate the neural correlates of conscious vision will be challenged. Following this, generalizations of rivalry to competition among multiple spatial patterns will be developed. It will be argued that such generalized rivalry can provide significant insights into the nature of high level visual decisions in the presence of ambiguous or incomplete information.