Journal of Vision
June 26, 2015
Yair Pinto, Simon van Gaal, Floris P De Lange et al.
177 citations
Expectations speed up conscious perception. In four experiments using predictive cueing and continuous flash suppression, expected images entered awareness faster than neutral or unexpected ones. This effect was not due to response priming, stimulus associations, or attentional timing biases. Top-down expectations had a stronger influence when visual input was ambiguous, consistent with predictive processing accounts. The findings support the idea that conscious access depends on verifying perceptual predictions.
Journal of Vision
October 25, 2012
Bernhard Schlagbauer, Hermann J Müller, Michael Zehetleitner et al.
38 citations
In visual search, people find targets faster when the arrangement of items repeats across trials, a phenomenon known as contextual cueing. This study investigated whether the knowledge gained from repeated displays is conscious. After a training phase, participants briefly viewed search displays followed by masks and then indicated the target's location and their confidence. Results showed that contextual cueing was driven by only about four learned configurations. For those learned displays, localization accuracy was higher, and participants reported greater visual experience and confidence compared to novel displays. The findings suggest that contextual cueing relies on a small number of repeated displays, and the ability to locate the target in those displays is accompanied by increased conscious awareness.
Journal of Vision
May 1, 2024
Nadine Dijkstra, Matan Mazor, Stephen M Fleming
9 citations
Perceptual reality monitoring errors can lead individuals to confuse imagined experiences with real ones. In two experiments involving 150 participants, confidence ratings aligned with decision-making shifts, indicating failures in distinguishing reality at both perceptual and metacognitive levels. While participants showed overall awareness of their errors, this insight did not correlate with specific trial-level confidence. These findings suggest that confidence does not effectively differentiate between imagination and reality during perception, highlighting the complexity of how we assess our own experiences.
Journal of Vision
March 17, 2010
Olivia Carter, David C. Burr, John D. Pettigrew et al.
6 citations
A hallucinogenic drug that activates serotonin receptors, psilocybin, impairs the ability to track multiple moving objects but does not affect spatial working memory, indicating a functional separation between these two cognitive processes. Blocking one type of serotonin receptor (5-HT2A) with ketanserin did not prevent this attentional deficit, pointing to the involvement of another receptor (5-HT1A) instead. The impairment may stem from difficulty ignoring distractions rather than a reduction in attentional capacity itself.
Journal of Vision
September 1, 2016
Leor Roseman, Martin I. Sereno, Robert Leech et al.
4 citations
Under LSD, the visual cortex's resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) becomes more dependent on its intrinsic retinotopic organization, as if the brain were processing actual visual input despite closed eyes. In 10 healthy subjects, RSFC between non-adjacent patches of V1 and V3 that represent congruent parts of the visual field (both horizontal or both vertical meridians) was significantly stronger than connectivity between incongruent patches (horizontal-vertical), compared to placebo. The difference between congruent and incongruent connectivity was greater under LSD (Cohen's d=1.6), suggesting that psychedelic imagery involves transient local retinotopic activation similar to that from visual stimulation.
Journal of Vision
March 19, 2010
O. Carter, John D. Pettigrew, Felix Hasler et al.
3 citations
Binocular rivalry, the fluctuation in visual awareness when different images are shown to each eye, is slowed by the hallucinogenic compound psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms. In ten healthy human subjects, psilocybin reduced the rate of switching between percepts and increased the experience of mixed or transitional percepts. Pretreatment with ketanserin, a selective 5-HT2A receptor antagonist, blocked most of psilocybin's positive psychotic-like symptoms but did not affect the slowing of binocular rivalry switching or negative symptoms related to reduced arousal and vigilance. This suggests that the slowing of binocular rivalry by psilocybin is not mediated by 5-HT2A receptors but may instead involve 5-HT1A receptor activation reducing serotonin release from the brainstem raphe nuclei, linking rivalry switching rate to arousal and attention.
Journal of Vision
November 5, 2024
Sophia Jungers, Ranji Varghese, Link Swanson et al.
2 citations
A small experiment with six participants tested whether the psychedelic compound psilocybin alters surround suppression, a visual effect where a high-contrast background reduces the perceived contrast of a central object. After taking 25 mg of psilocybin, participants reported stronger surround suppression compared to placebo (100 mg niacin). The intensity of subjective psychedelic visuals correlated positively with the magnitude of surround suppression. No serious adverse events occurred. The findings suggest a link between serotonergic neuromodulation and visual contrast perception, and may relate to weakened surround suppression observed in major depressive disorder and schizophrenia.
Journal of Vision
January 5, 2026
Cemre Yilmaz, Kerstin Maitz, Maximilian Gerschütz et al.
Binocular rivalry occurs when each eye sees a different image, causing conscious perception to alternate between them even though the physical stimuli remain constant. Contrast and attention have been shown to influence these alternations similarly, suggesting attention boosts effective stimulus contrast. This study examined brief transition periods between clear percepts, which are less understood. Observers reported four common transition types while contrast or exogenous attention was manipulated. Contrast and attention similarly affected overall rivalry dynamics, but their effects on transition appearance differed. This indicates attention's effect is not merely enhancing stimulus strength, a distinction revealed only when analyzing transition types.