How does the salience of a visual stimulus affect your brain's switch rate?

What is it about?

This study used images that differed in their level of salience (e.g., moving vs. stationary), and measured the effects on an individual's visual switch rate. Stimuli moving at 8 cycles/second induced a faster switch rate on average, but not much more than 4 cycles/second stimuli that were used in previous studies. In about a quarter of individuals, their switch rate was slower with the 8 cycles/second stimulus.

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Why is it important?

The finding of a slower rate with a faster stimulus in some individuals underscores the importance of attending to individual variation in studies of perceptual rivalry — by examining a much larger number of participants than what has traditionally been the case across the sensory sciences. The effect of stimulus salience on visual switch rate also requires examination in people with bipolar disorder and other mental illnesses to assess the optimal stimulus for further large studies into whether the trait can help in psychiatric diagnosis and finding genetic factors causing the illness.