Dynamical mechanisms of a monolayer binocular rivalry model with fixed and time-dependent stimuli

Current research practices have revealed that the neural mechanisms driving visual consciousness alternations in binocular rivalry come from the primary visual cortex, i.e., stimulus rivalry can be induced by monocular neurons. However, the competition mechanisms of the monocular neurons remain unclear. In this paper, we probe the dynamical characteristics of a monolayer binocular rivalry model (which contains four monocular neurons) with different types of stimuli, including fixed inputs, swap, flicker, swap and flicker, swap and blanks, respectively. Firstly, we study the dynamic effects of the traditional stimuli with fixed inputs (but with different grating conditions) on the monolayer rivalry model. Results show that Hopf bifurcations can induce three types of dynamical behaviors: winner-take-all (WTA), rivalry oscillation (RIV), and same activity (SAM), which are similar to other binocular rivalry models. Besides, the simulation results indicate that the competition mechanisms of the monolayer binocular rivalry model are more consistent with the experimental results compared with the hierarchical rivalry model proposed by Wilson. Secondly, the dynamical mechanisms of the monolayer rivalry model with four types of time-dependent stimuli are investigated. More complex dynamical behaviors including WTA-Mod, RIV-Mod, SAM-Mod induced by torus bifurcations and cycle skipping, multi-cycle skipping, chaos induced by period-doubling bifurcation, appear with different types of periodic stimuli. Finally, we analyze the perceptual alternation mechanisms based on the temporal characteristics of the monolayer rivalry model, and results are more consistent with the empirical findings compared with the hierarchical rivalry model. Our simulations and analysis provide a new opportunity for future experiments to investigate the neural mechanisms of binocular rivalry.