Stereogram experiments confirm that higher visual areas use feedback to censor conflicting visual cues.

Li Zhaoping of the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen uses stereograms to test how different brain areas interact when they process visual data. Her new study, now published in Vision Research, shows how certain conflicting visual cues for perceiving depth will be censored by the brain if given enough time. The findings provide algorithmic details for a longstanding hypothesis about how different visual areas in the brain interact with each other.