Cascades Across the Visual Field - Modelling Perceptual Coupling of Bistable Stimuli

When presented simultaneously, the percepts of multiple ambiguous visual stimuli (e.g., a lattice of Necker cubes) tend to align. This phenomenon, perceptual coupling, offers unique opportunities to investigate the subtleties of visual perception, such as perceptual grouping and ambiguity resolution. However, these systems portray several unintuitive and unresolved dynamics regarding inter-stimulus linkages and top-down influences. Previous research indicates a dependence of coupling strength on the degree of ambiguity and more frequent reversals when multiple stimuli are presented simultaneously opposed to individually. Further, the interplay between exogenous and endogenous triggers of reversals (e.g. through visual attention) has so far seen little progress in terms of precise, testable models. We propose a new mathematical model describing perceptual coupling based on a network of bistable stimuli following cusp catastrophe dynamics. By combining our own novel empirical results with current theoretical insights, we incorporate the role of attention, inter-stimulus connectivity and top-down influences into one testable explanatory model. Given the cusp dynamics at its core, our model elegantly captures the bistable nature of stimulus interpretations while allowing for a precise simulation of the temporal dynamics of perceptual coupling. With this model we aim to describe key phenomena of perceptual coupling in an intuitive manner.