在面对外界各种歧义物理刺激时,大脑会在相互排斥的主观知觉间交替切换,做出有意义的认知解释.双稳态知觉是研究人类意识转换的重要手段.本文首先系统地回顾了视觉双稳态知觉的现象及相关研究,包括运动产生的结构、两可图形、四方点运动、双眼竞争等,接着讨论了间断模式下的知觉稳定性,然后综合讨论了视觉双稳态知觉的理论模型,强调越来越多的证据支持自上而下加工模型,最后指出视觉双稳态知觉的研究意义,并对未来的研究方向进行了展望.

When faced with various kinds of ambiguous stimuli in this complex world, human brain can involuntarily alternate switching between exclusively subjective percepts towards specific objects, each of which makes meaningful cognitive interpretation. Bistable perception is a very common phenomenon in our daily life and plays an important role in human perception, which also provides a unique way to study human consciousness quantitatively. In this review we first systematically summarize recent studies of bistable perception in vision (including structure from motion, ambiguous figures, apparent quartet dots motion and binocular rivalry), including the definition of these bistable phenomena, approaches that researchers have used to study bistable perception and the conclusions that have been drawn. Then we give a discussion on one of the most important questions about perception stability, like what the influence factors are, to what extent these factors affect the bistable stability and how these factors exert such influences. Furthermore we summarize several theoretical models concerning the explanation of bistable phenomenon and point out several directions for future research, which could help provide a novel perspective of visual bistable perception. In recent years, as new techniques are becoming prevalent such as fMRI and electrophysiology, the neural mechanisms of visual bistable perception based on structure from motion, ambiguous figure, quartet dots and binocular rivalry have been widely studied. By combining behavioral experiment with neural measurements, we have largely promoted the understanding of neural mechanisms underlying bistable perception. Some studies of visual bistable perception also focus on perception stability. There are two methods to present the bistable stimuli: interval and continuous. Perception stability here refers to dominant perception of longer duration under interval presentation and subjective perception switches with certain regularity. However, these studies have been limited to behavioral experiments, which need to combine electrophysiological and fMRI techniques to explore which brain areas are involved in perception stability, and how the stability of perception works in parallel under the interval presentation. Visual bistable perception provides a unique way to understand how the brain generates alternative awareness under the constant stimulus. However, the underlying mechanism is still unclear. Recently many studies have proposed several theoretical models to explain neural mechanisms of visual bistable perception, including neuronal excitability-inhibition model, bottom-up and top-down circuit processing model. In contrast to others, more and more experimental data support top-down processing model that emphasizes on how high-level brain areas such as frontal and parietal cortex feedback information to the lower-level brain regions to modulate the switching between bistable perceptions. Though increasing studies are focusing on frontal-parietal network, a recent study claims that the activity of frontal-parietal network is associated with action response to perception switching. Hence the underlying mechanism is still unclear. Do different bistable stimuli share a common neural mechanism? Can one key area or a functional network be sufficient to causally trigger perception switching? Do different experimental paradigms entail commonalities and specificities? How can experiment data be used to test the current models? To answer all these questions and fully unveil neural mechanisms of visual bistable perception, there’s still a lot of work to be done.