Abstract

The study of instabilities in perception has attracted much interest in recent decades. The presented investigations focus on electrophysiological correlates of orientation reversals of both ambiguous visual stimuli and alternating non-ambiguous stimuli, representing the two options of the ambiguous version. Based on a refined experimental setup, significant features in the event-related potentials associated with the perception of orientation reversal were found in both cases. Their occipital location, their early occurence (200–250 ms), and their latency difference (50 ms) offer interesting perspectives for an understanding of unstable brain states in terms of basic concepts of dynamical systems.