Visual Processing: Primary Visual Cortex

The term cultural melting pot describes the phenomenon where people from different cultures around the world come together to live in the same community. While these people strive to adapt to the language and lifestyle of their new residence, they also often preserve much of their native culture allowing for others in their community to learn about their unique background and experiences. By analogy, the first visual area of the cerebral cortex is also a neuronal “melting pot” for visual information arriving through a variety of channels. Within this first visual cortical area, information from these various channels is mixed to some degree to begin establishing coherent representations of the visual environment. But to another degree, information also remains partially segregated in order to retain ...