Effects of consciousness on human brain waves following binocular rivalry

When the two eyes of an observer are exposed to conflicting stimuli, they enter into binocular rivalry and the two possible percepts will alternate in dominance. We investigated neural activity and its time course following binocular rivalry by measuring human event-related brain potentials to transitions from rivalrous to non-rivalrous stimulation. When these changes did not entail a change in conscious perception they elicited a markedly attenuated N1 component and a delayed and attenuated P3 peak as compared to percept-incompatible changes and non-rivalrous control conditions. These results suggest that in humans binocular rivalry is resolved at latest in extrastriate visual areas.