Gestalt theory reconfigured: Max Wertheimer's anticipation of recent developments in visual neuroscience

In the 1920s Max Wertheimer enunciated a credo of Gestalt theory: the prope rties of any of the parts are governed by the structural laws of the whole. Intense efforts at the time to discover these laws had only very limited s uccess. Psychology was in the grips of the Fechnerian tradition to seek exa ct relationships between the material and the mental and, because the Gesta lt movement could not deliver these, it never attained a major standing amo ng students of perception. However, as neurophysiological research into cor tical processing of visual stimuli progresses the need for organizing princ iples is increasingly making itself felt. Concepts like contour salience an d figure segregation, once the province of Gestalt psychology, are now taki ng on renewed significance as investigators combine neural modeling and psy chophysical approaches with electrophysiological ones to characterize neura l mechanisms of cognition. But it would be perilous not to take heed of som e of the lessons that the history of the Gestalt movement teaches.