Processing local signals into global patterns.
Perceptual organization or grouping is one of the central issues in vision research. Recent reports in the neuroimaging literature suggest that perceptual organization is mediated by distributed visual areas that range from the primary visual cortex (V1) to higher visual areas, depending on the availability of grouping cues and on the weight of contribution of each visual area. Evidence suggests that grouping by proximity and collinearity, and also perhaps filling-in, involve V1, whereas grouping by similarity and symmetry seems to depend on activation of higher visual areas. Further studies should include deliberate controls for confounding factors such as attentional artifacts and radial orientation bias, to clarify how spatiotemporal information in visual areas is integrated to give rise to perceptual organization.
Sasaki
Yuka
Y
Athinoula A Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, 149 13th Street, Charlestown, MA 02129, USA. yuka@nmr.ngh.harvard.edu
D000818:Animals; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D014785:Vision, Ocular / Q000502:physiology*; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000502:physiology*; D014795:Visual Pathways / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*