Brain activity associated with multistable perceptions: a functional MRI study

A potentially promising experimental paradigm in the understanding of visual awareness, which is a particular kind of consciousness, is multistable perceptions wherein images given to the eyes remain the same while the percept changes. Controversies remain as to precisely what region of the brain is involved in multistable perceptions. To address this question, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging and compared brain activities during multistable and monostable perceptions presenting a diamond changing its width. Although there were individual differences, significant differential activations were commonly observed in the bilateral parietal, prefrontal and middle temporal areas in a multistable condition compared to those in a monostable control condition. These findings suggest that activity in a distributed network of the parietal and prefrontal areas might be associated with multistable perceptions.