The Significance of Perceptual Multistability for Research on Cognitive Self-Organization

Perceptual order formation is a process of self-organization in a complex neural network and not a pick up of external information. In this view any stimulus condition is multistable. Stimuli are only boundary conditions of the autonomous process of perceptual order formation. Stability in perception is the result of a fast converging process of autonomous order formation which normally acts on a time scale far beyond conscious realization. Multistability in perception is an exceptional case in which the process of order formation (confronted with one constant boundary condition) spontaneously oscillates between two or more attractors established in the system dynamics. The spontaneous reversions in perceptual multistability show characteristics of nonlinear phase transitions and can be simulated with a high degree of correspondence on basis of self-organizing networks and synergetic modelling. In everyday experience multistability in perception is a relatively irrelevant curiosity but for investigating the process of order formation in cognition multistability is a paradigmatical research tool. Perceptual multistability can be used as a window to the underlying neural system dynamics. In a variety of different experiments the possibility is shown to change the potential landscape of the system dynamics in multistable perception by learning, context and meaning. The reversion process is discussed as an indicator for innersystemic fluctuations. Some hypothetical links to pathological phenomena in cognition are outlined.

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