The functional effects of voluntary and involuntary phantom color on conscious awareness

The constructive nature of vision is perhaps most evident during hallucinations, mental imagery, synesthesia, perceptual filling-in, and many illusions in which conscious visual experience does not overtly correspond to retinal stimulation: phantom vision. However, the relationship between voluntary and involuntary phantom vision remains largely unknown. Here, we investigated 2 forms of visual phantom color, neon phantom color spreading and voluntary color mental imagery, and their effect on subsequent binocular rivalry perception. Passively viewing neon phantom color induced time sensitive, suppressive effects on subsequent binocular rivalry. These effects could be attenuated by rotating the color inducers, or like color imagery, by concurrent uniform luminance stimulation. The degree of neon color induced rivalry suppression predicted the degree of voluntary color imagery facilitation, both on subsequent rivalry perception. Further, there were functional interactions between voluntary imagery and involuntary neon phantom vision when experienced successively. Our results suggest potential sensory mechanistic commonalities between voluntary and involuntary phantom vision. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).