The Brain's Visual World: Representation of Visual Targets in Cerebral Cortex

Abstract

Microelectrode recordings from behaving monkeys have shown that neuronal responses in the visual cerebral cortex can depend greatly on which aspect of the scene is the target of the animal's attention. Accumulating evidence suggests that while the early stages of the visual pathway provide a faithful representation of the retinal image, later stages of processing in the visual cortex hold representations that emphasize the viewer's current interest. By filtering out irrelevant signals and adding information about objects whose presence is remembered or inferred, the cortex creates an edited representation of the visual world that is dynamically modified to suit the immediate goals of the viewer.