Clinical suppression and binocular rivalry suppression: The effects of stimulus strength on the depth of suppression

doi:10.1016/0042-6989(89)90189-2

Vision Research

Volume 29, Issue 10, 1989, Pages 1325-1333

https://doi.org/10.1016/0042-6989(89)90189-2 Get rights and content

Abstract

In observers with abnormal binocular vision (such as strabismics or anisometropes) one eye's view is often suppressed. This clinical suppression serves to eliminate binocular diplopia and confusion. Suppression may also occur in observers with normal binocular vision, when the two eyes view disparate retinal images, a phenomenon known as binocular rivalry. When the image in an eye is suppressed, it is possible to determine the amount by which that suppressed stimulus is below the visibility threshold, or the depth of suppression. In the experiments presented here, the depth of suppression in an eye was measured as the strength of the stimulus in the contralateral eye (the stimulus inducing suppression) was varied. This was done for both clinical suppressors and normal observers undergoing binocular rivalry suppression. Independent changes were made to the contrast, the luminance, and the spatial frequency of the inducing stimulus. For both clinical suppression and binocular rivalry suppression, the depth of suppression was constant, regardless of the changes to the inducing stimulus.

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Citation Excerpt :
This finding could be important in the sense that it might imply some degree of task-dependence for sensory eye dominance. This clearly suggests that although CFS and BR may share one, or more, stages of visual processing, they are not necessarily one and the same (c.f. Holopigian, 1989). However, those that showed changes in sensory eye dominance between the two tasks had considerably smaller absolute asymmetry indices (mean = 3.68 ± 1.20 for BR and 3.00 ± 0.93 for CFS) than those that did not switch (mean = 5.52 ± 1.99 for BR and 4.80 ± 1.38 for CFS).
The competitive and inhibitory interactions between the two eyes’ images are a pervasive aspect of binocular vision. Over the last decade, our understanding of the neural processes underpinning binocular rivalry (BR) and continuous flash suppression (CFS) has increased substantially, but we still have little understanding of the relationship between these two effects and their variation in the general population. Studies that pool data across individuals and eyes risk masking substantial variations in binocular vision that exist in the general population. To investigate this issue we compared the depth of inter-ocular suppression evoked by BR with that elicited by CFS, in a group (N = 25) of visually normal individuals. A noise pattern (either static for BR or dynamic for CFS) was presented to one eye and its suppressive influence on a probe grating presented simultaneously to the other eye was measured. We found substantial individual differences in the magnitude of suppression (a 10-fold variation in probe detection threshold) evoked by each task, but performance on BR was a significant predictor of performance on the CFS task. However many individuals showed marked asymmetries between the two eyes’ ability to detect a suppressed target, that were not necessarily the same for the two tasks. There was a tendency for the magnitude of the asymmetry to increase as the refresh rate of the dynamic noise increased. The results suggest a common underlying mechanism is likely to be responsible, at least in part, for driving inter-ocular suppression under BR and CFS. The marked asymmetries in inter-ocular suppression at higher noise refresh rates, may be indicative of a difference in temporal processing between the eyes.
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Average monocular and binocular detection thresholds for the blurred target were 0.17 ± 0.11 (SD) and 0.34 ± 0.13 cd/m2. The average depth of suppression was −0.34 ± 0.21 log units (across observers, range: −0.11 to −0.66 log units), in agreement with previous studies in strabismic subjects with suppression, and in non-human primates with experimentally induced strabismus (Holopigian, 1989; Wensween, Harwerth, & Smith, 2001). For the observers in this experiment, the fixation disparity was small, amounting to 8.95 (±5.78 SD) and 5.26 (±4.20) arcmin in the foveal-suppression and non-suppression conditions, respectively, indicating that in both conditions the asymmetric vergence response was essentially equivalent to the vergence demand.
Correctly perceiving the direction of a visible object with respect to one’s self (egocentric visual direction) requires that information about the location of the image on the retina (oculocentric visual direction) be combined with signals about the position of the eyes in the head. The Wells–Hering laws that govern the perception of visual direction and modern restatements of these laws assume implicitly that retinal and eye-position information are independent of one another. By measuring observers’ manual pointing responses to targets in different horizontal locations, we show that retinal and eye-position information are not treated independently in the brain. In particular, decreasing the relative visibility of one eye’s retinal image reduces the strength of the eye-position signal associated with that eye. The results can be accounted for by interactions between eye-specific retinal and eye-position signals at a common neural location.
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Suppression in strabismus is more likely to occur when the images for the left- and right-eye are similar. In this study the relationship between the depth of strabismic suppression and the amount of dissimilarity between the images was quantified. Six subjects with microstrabismus looked at two identical colorful, cartoon images via mirrors. In the middle of each screen was a circular aperture with an opal glass, which was illuminated from the back by a halogen lamp during 300 ms with a gradual on- and offset in intensity. In the circular aperture images that slightly differed in shape were presented to both eyes. The dominant eye was presented a circle, the squinting eye a circle that, in four steps, changed its shape into a square. Under each of these four conditions, the image for the dominant eye was attenuated progressively by neutral density filters. When the image for the squinting eye was perceived, the depth of the suppression was thereby measured. It was found that suppression decreased with dissimilarity of the images.
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To determine if monkeys exhibit clinical suppression in response to early abnormal binocular vision, we compared dichoptic to monocular luminance increment thresholds in monkeys reared with alternating monocular defocus or optically induced strabismus. In the absence of amblyopia, clinical suppression was associated with strabismus and with as little as 1.50 diopters of anisometropia. The severity of suppression was roughly correlated with the magnitude of anisometropia. The demonstration of clinical suppression in monkeys provides a model for future investigations of factors that may influence the development of suppression, but which are not possible to accurately document or manipulate in human subjects.
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Recently, it has been proposed that all suppressive phenomena observed in the primary visual cortex (V1) are mediated by a single mechanism, involving inhibition by pools of neurons, which, between them, represent a wide range of stimulus specificities. The strength of such inhibition would depend on the stimulus that produces it (particularly its contrast) rather than on the firing rate of the inhibited cell. We tested this hypothesis by measuring contrast-response functions (CRFs) of neurons in cat V1 for stimulation of the classical receptive field of the dominant eye with an optimal grating alone, and in the presence of inhibition caused by (1) a superimposed orthogonal grating (cross-orientation inhibition); (2) a surrounding iso-oriented grating (surround inhibition); and (3) an orthogonal grating in the other eye (interocular suppression). We fitted hyperbolic ratio functions and found that the effect of cross-orientation inhibition was best described as a rightward shift of the CRF (‘contrast-gain control’), while surround inhibition and interocular suppression were primarily characterised as downward shifts of the CRF (‘response-gain control’). However, the latter also showed a component of contrast-gain control. The two modes of suppression were differently distributed between the layers of cortex. Response-gain control prevailed in layer 4, whereas cells in layers 2/3, 5 and 6 mainly showed contrast-gain control. As in human observers, surround gratings caused suppression when the central grating was of high contrast, but in over a third of the cells tested, enhanced responses for low-contrast central stimuli, hence actually decreasing threshold contrast.
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Monocular contrast sensitivity (CS) measurements were obtained in the two principal meridians of eight constant unilateral strabismic subjects and four subjects diagnosed with alternating strabismus. The results indicated that: (1) the CS of both the fellow and deviating eyes of patients with a constant unilateral deviation is significantly less than that of visually normal eyes at high spatial frequencies; (2) both the fellow and deviating eyes reveal a significant reduction in CS to vertically oriented gratings. This effect is frequency-specific, occurring only at the highest spatial frequencies; (3) the magnitude of the orientation anisotropy did not vary systematically with the degree of amblyopia; and (4) a mild orientation anisotropy was observed in only three of the eight alternating strabismic eyes tested. The etiology of the vertical effect is examined with respect to the role of anomalous binocular competition, suppression and abnormal eye movements. Copyright © 1996 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.

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Clinical suppression and binocular rivalry suppression: The effects of stimulus strength on the depth of suppression

Abstract

Vision Research

Vision Research

A neural theory of binocular rivalry

Psychological Review

On the inhibitory nature of binocular rivalry suppression

JEP: Human Perception and Performance

Binocularity in comitant strabismus: binocular visual fields studies

Documenta Ophthalmologica

Non-fusable stimuli and role of binocular inhibition in normal and pathological vision, especially strabismus

Documenta Ophthalmologies

Binocular rivalry and reciprocal inhibition

Perception and Psycholphysics

Clinical suppression and amblyopia

Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science

Light, colour and vision