The influence of chromatic context on binocular color rivalry: perception and neural representation

The predominance of rivalrous targets is affected by surrounding context when stimuli rival in orientation, motion or color. This study investigated the influence of chromatic context on binocular color rivalry. The predominance of rivalrous chromatic targets was measured in various surrounding contexts. The first experiment showed that a chromatic surround's influence was stronger when the surround was uniform or a grating with luminance contrast (chromatic/black grating) compared to an equiluminant grating (chromatic/white). The second experiment revealed virtually no effect of the orientation of the surrounding chromatic context, using chromatically rivalrous vertical gratings. These results are consistent with a chromatic representation of the context by a non-oriented, chromatically selective and spatially antagonistic receptive field. Neither a double-opponent receptive field nor a receptive field without spatial antagonism accounts for the influence of context on binocular color rivalry.