Cite as:
Moradi F, Zali B, 1999, "Visual synchrony and stereovision" Perception 28 ECVP Abstract Supplement

Visual synchrony and stereovision

F Moradi, B Zali

Interocular asynchrony can produce a depth illusion in dynamic noise patterns [Tyler, 1974 Nature (London) 250 781 - 782]. We introduced temporal asynchronies in dynamic random-dot stereograms such that interocular delays of 13.4 ms were distributed randomly and evenly between the pixels of two stereo images. The effects of noise and contrast were very similar to those for conventional stereograms and we found that asynchrony did not interfere with stereopsis (logistic regression, p>0.1). One possible explanation is that binocular cells restructure their receptive field to compensate for the interocular delay. If this were true, a brief view of a static stereogram would be difficult to discriminate after adaptation to asynchronous input. Subjects were asked to view either an asynchronous or a conventional dynamic stereogram for 2 s before and after a 13.4 ms exposure to a static stereogram and then make an 8AFC decision about the position of a circle during a brief stimulus presentation. We found that error rates were lower after adaptation to an asynchronous stereogram and there was a small, but significant, difference between the two groups ( p<0.01). These results are inconsistent with the receptive-field-restructuring hypothesis and instead suggest that the underlying neural mechanism of stereopsis is broadly tuned for temporal asynchronies between the two eyes.

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