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Authors: Till D. Frank, Zizhu (Amy) Chen
Keywords: perception, motion-induced blindness, schizophrenia, dynamical diseases, self-organization, modeling
Abstract: Motion-induced blindness (MIB) can lead to objects in the foreground being temporarily invisible to the human brain due to a moving background. The MIB paradigm may aid in diagnosing schizophrenia and other perception-related disorders. The aim of the study is to apply the self-organization perspective of human perception and performance (Frank, T., Determinism and Self-organization of Human Perception and Performance, Springer, Berlin, 2019) to the MIB phenomenon, in general, and to MIB under schizophrenia, in particular. To this end, the MIB phenomenon is modeled with the help of a brain oscillator arising from the competition between two self-organized brain activity patterns. It is shown how the frequency of blindness episodes depends on certain neuronal network parameters. The theoretical considerations are linked to experimental work that has shown that the frequency of blindness episodes is affected by the background speed, on the one hand, and is reduced by certain diseases such as schizophrenia, on the other hand. In this context, it is proposed that schizophrenia belongs to the class of dynamical diseases and emerges via a transition from a healthy to a disease state that shifts certain neuronal network parameters to abnormal levels. It is recommended to use signs for the onset of the transition for prevention purposes in high-risk cases such as children with schizophrenic parents.