PSYCH 1 Chapter Notes - Chapter 8: Anne Treisman, Chameleon, Visual Cortex
Document Summary
Purpose of human vision is not to detect simple presence or absence of light or different wavelengths, but to identify meaningful objects and actions. Ganglion cells of the optic nerve run to the thalamus, in the middle of the brain, and form synapses with other neurons that carry their output to the primary visual area of the cerebral cortex. Within the primary visual area, million of neurons are involved in analyzing the sensory input. David hubel and torsten wiesel recorded the activity of individual neurons in the primary visual cortex of cats while the cats" eyes were stimulated by simple black-and-white patterns of various shapes, sizes, and orientations. They found that different neurons responded preferentially to different patterns. For example, some neurons responded best to stimuli that contained a straight contour separating a black patch from a white patch. Hubel and wiesel referred to these neurons as edge detectors.
