THE BRAINS VISUAL WORLD - REPRESENTATION OF VISUAL TARGETS IN CEREBRAL-CORTEX

Microelectrode recordings from behaving monkeys have shown that neuron al responses in the visual cerebral cortex can depend greatly on which aspect of the scene is the target of the animal's attention. Accumula ting evidence suggests that while the early stages of the visual pathw ay provide a faithful representation of the retinal image, later stage s of processing in the visual cortex hold representations that emphasi ze the viewer's current interest. By filtering out irrelevant signals and adding information about objects whose presence is remembered or i nferred, the cortex creates an edited representation of the visual wor ld that is dynamically modified to suit the immediate goals of the vie wer.