Reversed Depth in Anticorrelated Random-Dot Stereograms and the Central-Peripheral Difference in Visual Inference

Abstract

In a random-dot stereogram, the percept of object surfaces in a three-dimensional scene is generated by images presented to left and right eyes that comprise interocularly corresponding random black and white dots. The spatial disparities between the corresponding dots determine the depths of object surfaces. If the dots are anticorrelated, such that a black dot in one monocular image corresponds to a white dot in the other, disparity-tuned neurons in the primary visual cortex (V1) respond as if their preferred disparities become nonpreferred and vice versa, thereby reversing the disparity signs reported to higher visual areas. Typically, when viewing anticorrelated random-dot stereograms presented in the central visual field, humans have great difficulty perceiving the reversed depth or indeed any coherent depth at all. We report that the reversed depth is more easily perceived in the peripheral visual field, supporting a recently proposed central-peripheral dichotomy in the way that feedback from higher to lower visual cortical areas implements visual inference.