Binocular Rivalry: Competing Neural Populations (2D)

When each eye is shown a different image, perception does not blend the two — it alternates, spontaneously and unpredictably, between one image and the other every few seconds. This simulator renders the leading computational account of that switch: two rate-coded neural populations, one per eye, locked in mutual inhibition and slowed by spike-frequency adaptation, with independent noise driving irregular timing. Watch the two rival images visibly trade dominance as their live firing-rate traces cross, tune the inhibition, adaptation and noise that drive the fight, and bias which eye's image wins more often — the same dynamics thought to underlie real binocular rivalry and, more broadly, how competing neural representations resolve into a single conscious percept.