What does the Necker tube tell us about perception?

What does the Necker tube tell us about perception?

When looking at such ambiguous stimuli, in this case the Necker cube, we experience a perception called "Bistable perception." As the title itself portrays (Bi- two), it means that we can perceive both interpretations; 1. see the cube facing down to the left or 2. facing up to the right. However, we can only perceive one of these interpretations one at a time.

This bistable perception results in spontaneous alternations between the two interpretations, as mentioned above. These spontaneous alternations are modeled by the neural networks on relying on "competition" or " adaptation."

If one of the interpretation produced a stronger pattern of activation, it will defeat the other, producing a "winner" interpretation.

The Necker cube is an ambiguous line cube, which may be seen in two different ways. The figure will seem to flip abck and forth between two valid interpretations which can be looked at as two hypotheses of the brain. As explained above the necker cube is an example of a multistable, to be more specific bistable perception in which two possible interpretations of the stimulus can occur. In this case it is possible to conscioussly change the perspective by looking at certain points of the image.

This phenomenon shows that ambiguity may exist in perception and also that the brain may at once have two interchangeable hypotheses/interpretations of the same stimulus.