Demo 1

Prolonged Unconsciousness by Continuous Flash Suppression

(Experiment 1 in Tsuchiya & Koch)

Look at the movie through a color filter (one in red, the other in blue). What do you see?

Most people see only a rapid stream of Mondrian patterns for a long time. Here, a different Mondrian pattern is flashed every 100 msec into one eye through a blue filter.

Do you see a stationary stripe pattern? The stripe pattern is projected to the other eye through the complimentary filter (you can check it by closing one eye). Although it is projected to one eye all the time, it is suppressed from consciousness.

If you click a stop button (" mark), you will experience alternating percepts between the stripe and the Mondrian pattern on the order of seconds. This alternation is called binocular rivalry. (For the excellent review and demo for the binocular rivalry, see Dr. Randolph Blake's website )

The duration of perceptual suppression is at least ten times greater than that produced by binocular rivalry. Because Continuous Flash Suppression provides a very reliable and prolonged perceptual suppression, it is an attractive tool for studies of unconscious visual processing.

Demo 2

Continuous Flash Suppression reduces Negative Afterimages

Direction: To see these demo, you need a mirror setup. Adjust the angles of mirrors to fuse the images on the left and right.

(Experiment 2 in Tsuchiya & Koch)

Baseline afterimage. After adjusting a mirror,start the movie. On your left eye, a pink-green stripe will be shown. If you don't move your eyes, you will see a vivid afterimage when the stripe is replaced by the gray background (after 5 seconds).

The negative afterimage here should be weaker than the one you saw in the above demo. Continuous Flash Suppression reduces the intensity of negative afterimages.

Demo 3

Supplement for experiment 4 in Tsuchiya & Koch

Motion binocular rivalry stimuli used in experiment 4.