Visual perception

Ability to interpret the surrounding environment using light in the visible spectrum

"Sight" and "Eyesight" redirect here. For other uses, see Sight (disambiguation) and Eyesight (song).

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
Find sources: "Visual perception" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (March 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

|

Part of a series on

Psychology

* Outline
* History
* Subfields

Basic psychology

* Abnormal
* Affective neuroscience
* Affective science
* Behavioral genetics
* Behavioral neuroscience
* Behaviorism
* Cognitive/Cognitivism
* Cognitive neuroscience
* Social
* Comparative
* Cross-cultural
* Cultural
* Developmental
* Differential
* Ecological
* Evolutionary
* Experimental
* Gestalt
* Intelligence
* Mathematical
* Moral
* Neuropsychology
* Perception
* Personality
* Psycholinguistics
* Psychophysiology
* Quantitative
* Social
* Theoretical

Applied psychology

* Anomalistic
* Applied behavior analysis
* Art
* Assessment
* Aviation
* Biography of famous people
* Clinical
* Coaching
* Color
* Community
* Consumer
* Counseling
* Critical
* Educational
* Ergonomics
* Fashion
* Feminist
* Food
* Forensic
* Health
* History
* Humanistic
* Industrial and organizational
* Legal
* Media
* Medical
* Military
* Music
* Occupational health
* Pastoral
* Peace and war
* Political
* Positive
* Photography
* Psychometrics
* Psychotherapy
* Religion
* School
* Sex differences
* Sport and exercise
* Suicidology
* Systems
* Trading
* Traffic

Concepts

* Behavior
* Behavioral engineering
* Behavioral genetics
* Behavioral neuroscience
* Cognition
* Competence
* Consciousness
* Consumer behavior
* Emotions
* Feelings
* Human factors and ergonomics
* Intelligence
* Maslow's hierarchy of needs
* Mental state
* Mind
* Psychology of religion
* Psychometrics
* Sex differences
* Terror management theory

Lists

* Counseling topics
* Disciplines
* Organizations
* Outline
* Psychologists
* Psychotherapies
* Research methods
* Schools of thought
* Timeline
* Topics

* Psychology portal

* v
* t
* e

Visual perception is the ability to detect light and use it to form an image of the surrounding environment.[1] Photodetection without image formation is classified as light sensing. In most vertebrates, visual perception can be enabled by photopic vision (daytime vision) or scotopic vision (night vision), with most vertebrates having both. Visual perception detects light (photons) in the visible spectrum reflected by objects in the environment or emitted by light sources. The visible range of light is defined by what is readily perceptible to humans, though the visual perception of non-humans often extends beyond the visual spectrum. The resulting perception is also known as vision, sight, or eyesight (adjectives visual, optical, and ocular, respectively). The various physiological components involved in vision are referred to collectively as the visual system, and are the focus of much research in linguistics, psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, and molecular biology, collectively referred to as vision science.

## Visual system

[edit]

Main article: Visual system

Most vertebrates achieve vision through similar visual systems. Generally, light enters the eye through the cornea and is focused by the lens onto the retina, a light-sensitive membrane at the back of the eye. Specialized photoreceptive cells in the retina act as transducers, converting the light into neural impulses. The photoreceptors are broadly classes into cone cells and rod cells, which enable photopic and scotopic vision, respectively. These photoreceptors' signals are transmitted by the optic nerve, from the retina upstream to central ganglia in the brain. The lateral geniculate nucleus, which transmits the information to the visual cortex. Signals from the retina also travel directly from the retina to the superior colliculus.[2]

The lateral geniculate nucleus sends signals to the primary visual cortex, also called striate cortex. Extrastriate cortex, also called visual association cortex is a set of cortical structures, that receive information from striate cortex, as well as each other.[3] Recent descriptions of visual association cortex describe a division into two functional pathways, a ventral and a dorsal pathway. This conjecture is known as the two streams hypothesis.

## Study

[edit]

See also: Two-streams hypothesis

The major problem in visual perception is that what people see is not simply a translation of retinal stimuli (i.e., the image on the retina), with the brain altering the basic information taken in. Thus people interested in perception have long struggled to explain what visual processing does to create what is actually seen.

### Early studies

[edit]

The visual dorsal stream (green) and ventral stream (purple) are shown. Much of the human cerebral cortex is involved in vision.

There were two major ancient Greek schools, providing a primitive explanation of how vision works.

The first was the "emission theory" of vision which maintained that vision occurs when rays emanate from the eyes and are intercepted by visual objects. If an object was seen directly it was by 'means of rays' coming out of the eyes and again falling on the object. A refracted image was, however, seen by 'means of rays' as well, which came out of the eyes, traversed through the air, and after refraction, fell on the visible object which was sighted as the result of the movement of the rays from the eye. This theory was championed by scholars who were followers of Euclid's Optics and Ptolemy's Optics.

The second school advocated the so-called 'intromission' approach which sees vision as coming from something entering the eyes representative of the object. With its main propagator Aristotle (De Sensu),[4] and his followers,[4] this theory seems to have some contact with modern theories of what vision really is, but it remained only a speculation lacking any experimental foundation. (In eighteenth-century England, Isaac Newton, John Locke, and others, carried the intromission theory of vision forward by insisting that vision involved a process in which rays—composed of actual corporeal matter—emanated from seen objects and entered the seer's mind/sensorium through the eye's aperture.)[5]

Both schools of thought relied upon the principle that "like is only known by like", and thus upon the notion that the eye was composed of some "internal fire" that interacted with the "external fire" of visible light and made vision possible. Plato makes this assertion in his dialogue Timaeus (45b and 46b), as does Empedocles (as reported by Aristotle in his De Sensu, DK frag. B17).[4]

Leonardo da Vinci: The eye has a central line and everything that reaches the eye through this central line can be seen distinctly.

Alhazen (965 – c. 1040) carried out many investigations and experiments on visual perception, extended the work of Ptolemy on binocular vision, and commented on the anatomical works of Galen.[6][7] He was the first person to explain that vision occurs when light bounces on an object and then is directed to one's eyes.[8]

Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) is believed to be the first to recognize the special optical qualities of the eye. He wrote "The function of the human eye ... was described by a large number of authors in a certain way. But I found it to be completely different." His main experimental finding was that there is only a distinct and clear vision at the line of sight—the optical line that ends at the fovea. Although he did not use these words literally he actually is the father of the modern distinction between foveal and peripheral vision.[9]

Isaac Newton (1642–1726/27) was the first to discover through experimentation, by isolating individual colors of the spectrum of light passing through a prism, that the visually perceived color of objects appeared due to the character of light the objects reflected, and that these divided colors could not be changed into any other color, which was contrary to scientific expectation of the day.[10]

### Unconscious inference

[edit]

Main article: Unconscious inference

Hermann von Helmholtz is often credited with the first modern study of visual perception. Helmholtz examined the human eye and concluded that it was incapable of producing a high-quality image. Insufficient information seemed to make vision impossible. He, therefore, concluded that vision could only be the result of some form of "unconscious inference", coining that term in 1867. He proposed the brain was making assumptions and conclusions from incomplete data, based on previous experiences.[11]

Inference requires prior experience of the world.

Examples of well-known assumptions, based on visual experience, are:

* light comes from above;
* objects are normally not viewed from below;
* faces are seen (and recognized) upright;[12]
* closer objects can block the view of more distant objects, but not vice versa; and
* figures (i.e., foreground objects) tend to have convex borders.

The study of visual illusions (cases when the inference process goes wrong) has yielded much insight into what sort of assumptions the visual system makes.

Another type of unconscious inference hypothesis (based on probabilities) has recently been revived in so-called Bayesian studies of visual perception.[13] Proponents of this approach consider that the visual system performs some form of Bayesian inference to derive a perception from sensory data. However, it is not clear how proponents of this view derive, in principle, the relevant probabilities required by the Bayesian equation. Models based on this idea have been used to describe various visual perceptual functions, such as the perception of motion, the perception of depth, and figure-ground perception.[14][15] The "wholly empirical theory of perception" is a related and newer approach that rationalizes visual perception without explicitly invoking Bayesian formalisms.[citation needed]

### Gestalt theory

[edit]

Main article: Gestalt psychology

Gestalt psychologists working primarily in the 1930s and 1940s raised many of the research questions that are studied by vision scientists today.[16]

The Gestalt Laws of Organization have guided the study of how people perceive visual components as organized patterns or wholes, instead of many different parts. "Gestalt" is a German word that partially translates to "configuration or pattern" along with "whole or emergent structure". According to this theory, there are eight main factors that determine how the visual system automatically groups elements into patterns: Proximity, Similarity, Closure, Symmetry, Common Fate (i.e. common motion), Continuity as well as Good Gestalt (pattern that is regular, simple, and orderly) and Past Experience.[17]

### Analysis of eye movement

[edit]

See also: Eye movement

Eye movement first 2 seconds (Yarbus, 1967)

During the 1960s, technical development permitted the continuous registration of eye movement during reading,[18] in picture viewing,[19] and later, in visual problem solving,[20] and when headset-cameras became available, also during driving.[21]

The picture to the right shows what may happen during the first two seconds of visual inspection. While the background is out of focus, representing the peripheral vision, the first eye movement goes to the boots of the man (just because they are very near the starting fixation and have a reasonable contrast). Eye movements serve the function of attentional selection, i.e., to select a fraction of all visual inputs for deeper processing by the brain.[22]

The following fixations jump from face to face. They might even permit comparisons between faces.[23]

It may be concluded that the icon face is a very attractive search icon within the peripheral field of vision. The foveal vision adds detailed information to the peripheral first impression.

It can also be noted that there are different types of eye movements: fixational eye movements (microsaccades, ocular drift, and tremor), vergence movements, saccadic movements and pursuit movements. Fixations are comparably static points where the eye rests. However, the eye is never completely still, and gaze position will drift. These drifts are in turn corrected by microsaccades, very small fixational eye movements. Vergence movements involve the cooperation of both eyes to allow for an image to fall on the same area of both retinas. This results in a single focused image. Saccadic movements is the type of eye movement that makes jumps from one position to another position and is used to rapidly scan a particular scene/image. Lastly, pursuit movement is smooth eye movement and is used to follow objects in motion.[24]

### Face and object recognition

[edit]

There is considerable evidence that face and object recognition are accomplished by distinct systems. For example, prosopagnosic patients show deficits in face, but not object processing, while object agnosic patients (most notably, patient C.K.) show deficits in object processing with spared face processing.[25] Behaviorally, it has been shown that faces, but not objects, are subject to inversion effects, leading to the claim that faces are "special".[25][26] Further, face and object processing recruit distinct neural systems.[27] Notably, some have argued that the apparent specialization of the human brain for face processing does not reflect true domain specificity, but rather a more general process of expert-level discrimination within a given class of stimulus,[28] though this latter claim is the subject of substantial debate. Using fMRI and electrophysiology Doris Tsao and colleagues described brain regions and a mechanism for face recognition in macaque monkeys.[29]

The inferotemporal cortex has a key role in the task of recognition and differentiation of different objects. A study by MIT shows that subset regions of the IT cortex are in charge of different objects.[30] By selectively shutting off neural activity of many small areas of the cortex, the animal gets alternately unable to distinguish between certain particular pairments of objects. This shows that the IT cortex is divided into regions that respond to different and particular visual features. In a similar way, certain particular patches and regions of the cortex are more involved in face recognition than other object recognition.

Some studies tend to show that rather than the uniform global image, some particular features and regions of interest of the objects are key elements when the brain needs to recognise an object in an image.[31][32] In this way, the human vision is vulnerable to small particular changes to the image, such as disrupting the edges of the object, modifying texture or any small change in a crucial region of the image.[33]

Studies of people whose sight has been restored after a long blindness reveal that they cannot necessarily recognize objects and faces (as opposed to color, motion, and simple geometric shapes). Some hypothesize that being blind during childhood prevents some part of the visual system necessary for these higher-level tasks from developing properly.[34] The general belief that a critical period lasts until age 5 or 6 was challenged by a 2007 study that found that older patients could improve these abilities with years of exposure.[35]

## Cognitive and computational approaches

[edit]

In the 1970s, David Marr developed a multi-level theory of vision, which analyzed the process of vision at different levels of abstraction. In order to focus on the understanding of specific problems in vision, he identified three levels of analysis: the computational, algorithmic and implementational levels. Many vision scientists, including Tomaso Poggio, have embraced these levels of analysis and employed them to further characterize vision from a computational perspective.[36]

The computational level addresses, at a high level of abstraction, the problems that the visual system must overcome. The algorithmic level attempts to identify the strategy that may be used to solve these problems. Finally, the implementational level attempts to explain how solutions to these problems are realized in neural circuitry.

Marr suggested that it is possible to investigate vision at any of these levels independently. Marr described vision as proceeding from a two-dimensional visual array (on the retina) to a three-dimensional description of the world as output. His stages of vision include:

* A 2D or primal sketch of the scene, based on feature extraction of fundamental components of the scene, including edges, regions, etc. Note the similarity in concept to a pencil sketch drawn quickly by an artist as an impression.
* A 21⁄2 D sketch of the scene, where textures are acknowledged, etc. Note the similarity in concept to the stage in drawing where an artist highlights or shades areas of a scene, to provide depth.
* A 3 D model, where the scene is visualized in a continuous, 3-dimensional map.[37]

Marr's 21⁄2D sketch assumes that a depth map is constructed, and that this map is the basis of 3D shape perception. However, both stereoscopic and pictorial perception, as well as monocular viewing, make clear that the perception of 3D shape precedes, and does not rely on, the perception of the depth of points. It is not clear how a preliminary depth map could, in principle, be constructed, nor how this would address the question of figure-ground organization, or grouping. The role of perceptual organizing constraints, overlooked by Marr, in the production of 3D shape percepts from binocularly-viewed 3D objects has been demonstrated empirically for the case of 3D wire objects, e.g.[38][39] For a more detailed discussion, see Pizlo (2008).[40]

A more recent, alternative framework proposes that vision is composed instead of the following three stages: encoding, selection, and decoding.[41] Encoding is to sample and represent visual inputs (e.g., to represent visual inputs as neural activities in the retina). Selection, or attentional selection, is to select a tiny fraction of input information for further processing, e.g., by shifting gaze to an object or visual location to better process the visual signals at that location. Decoding is to infer or recognize the selected input signals, e.g., to recognize the object at the center of gaze as somebody's face. In this framework,[42] attentional selection starts at the primary visual cortex along the visual pathway, and the attentional constraints impose a dichotomy between the central and peripheral visual fields for visual recognition or decoding.

## Transduction

[edit]

Main article: Visual phototransduction

Transduction is the process through which energy from environmental stimuli is converted to neural activity. The retina contains three different cell layers: photoreceptor layer, bipolar cell layer, and ganglion cell layer. The photoreceptor layer where transduction occurs is farthest from the lens. It contains photoreceptors with different sensitivities called rods and cones. The cones are responsible for color perception and are of three distinct types labeled red, green, and blue. Rods are responsible for the perception of objects in low light.[43] Photoreceptors contain within them a special chemical called a photopigment, which is embedded in the membrane of the lamellae; a single human rod contains approximately 10 million of them. The photopigment molecules consist of two parts: an opsin (a protein) and retinal (a lipid).[44] There are 3 specific photopigments (each with their own wavelength sensitivity) that respond across the spectrum of visible light. When the appropriate wavelengths (those that the specific photopigment is sensitive to) hit the photoreceptor, the photopigment splits into two, which sends a signal to the bipolar cell layer, which in turn sends a signal to the ganglion cells, the axons of which form the optic nerve and transmit the information to the brain. If a particular cone type is missing or abnormal, due to a genetic anomaly, a color vision deficiency, sometimes called color blindness will occur.[45]

## Opponent process

[edit]

Transduction involves chemical messages sent from the photoreceptors to the bipolar cells to the ganglion cells. Several photoreceptors may send their information to one ganglion cell. There are two types of ganglion cells: red/green and yellow/blue. These neurons constantly fire—even when not stimulated. The brain interprets different colors (and with a lot of information, an image) when the rate of firing of these neurons alters. Red light stimulates the red cone, which in turn stimulates the red/green ganglion cell. Likewise, green light stimulates the green cone, which stimulates the green/red ganglion cell and blue light stimulates the blue cone which stimulates the blue/yellow ganglion cell. The rate of firing of the ganglion cells is increased when it is signaled by one cone and decreased (inhibited) when it is signaled by the other cone. The first color in the name of the ganglion cell is the color that excites it and the second is the color that inhibits it. i.e.: A red cone would excite the red/green ganglion cell and the green cone would inhibit the red/green ganglion cell. This is an opponent process. If the rate of firing of a red/green ganglion cell is increased, the brain would know that the light was red, if the rate was decreased, the brain would know that the color of the light was green.[45]

## Artificial visual perception

[edit]

Theories and observations of visual perception have been the main source of inspiration for computer vision (also called machine vision, or computational vision). Special hardware structures and software algorithms provide machines with the capability to interpret the images coming from a camera or a sensor.

## See also

[edit]

* Color vision
* Computer vision
* Depth perception
* Entoptic phenomenon
* Gestalt psychology
* Lateral masking
* Looming
* Naked eye
* Machine vision
* McGill Picture Anomaly Test
* Motion perception
* Multisensory integration
* Interpretation (philosophy)
* Spatial frequency
* Visual illusion
* Visual processing
* Visual system
* Sensations

### Vision deficiencies or disorders

[edit]

* Achromatopsia
* Akinetopsia
* Apperceptive agnosia
* Associative visual agnosia
* Color blindness
* Hallucinogen persisting perception disorder
* Illusory palinopsia
* Prosopagnosia
* Refractive error
* Recovery from blindness
* Scotopic sensitivity syndrome
* Visual agnosia
* Visual snow

### Related disciplines

[edit]

* Cognitive psychology
* Cognitive science
* Neuroscience
* Ophthalmology
* Optometry
* Psychophysics

## References

[edit]

1. ^ "Vision". University of Hawaii. August 22, 2012. Retrieved February 15, 2025.
2. ^ Sadun, Alfredo A.; Johnson, Betty M.; Smith, Lois E. H. (1986). "Neuroanatomy of the human visual system: Part II Retinal projections to the superior colliculus and pulvinar". Neuro-Ophthalmology. 6 (6): 363–370\. doi:10.3109/01658108609016476. ISSN 0165-8107.
3. ^ Carlson, Neil R. (2013). "6". Physiology of Behaviour (11th ed.). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, US: Pearson Education Inc. pp. 187–189\. ISBN 978-0-205-23939-9.
4. ^ a b c Finger, Stanley (1994). Origins of neuroscience: a history of explorations into brain function. Oxford [Oxfordshire]: Oxford University Press. pp. 67–69\. ISBN 978-0-19-506503-9. OCLC 27151391.
5. ^ Swenson Rivka (2010). "Optics, Gender, and the Eighteenth-Century Gaze: Looking at Eliza Haywood's Anti-Pamela". The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation. 51 (1–2): 27–43\. doi:10.1353/ecy.2010.0006. S2CID 145149737.1–2&rft.pages=27-43&rft.date=2010&rft_id=info:doi/10.1353/ecy.2010.0006&rft_id=https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:145149737#id-name=S2CID&rft.au=Swenson+Rivka&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:Visual+perception" class="Z3988">
6. ^ Howard, I (1996). "Alhazen's neglected discoveries of visual phenomena". Perception. 25 (10): 1203–1217\. doi:10.1068/p251203. PMID 9027923. S2CID 20880413.
7. ^ Khaleefa, Omar (1999). "Who Is the Founder of Psychophysics and Experimental Psychology?". American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences. 16 (2): 1–26\. doi:10.35632/ajis.v16i2.2126.
8. ^ Adamson, Peter (July 7, 2016). Philosophy in the Islamic World: A History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps. Oxford University Press. p. 77\. ISBN 978-0-19-957749-1.
9. ^ Keele, Kd (1955). "Leonardo da Vinci on vision". Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine. 48 (5): 384–390\. doi:10.1177/003591575504800512. ISSN 0035-9157. PMC 1918888. PMID 14395232.
10. ^ Margaret, Livingstone (2008). Vision and art : the biology of seeing. Hubel, David H. New York: Abrams. ISBN 978-0-8109-9554-3. OCLC 192082768.
11. ^ von Helmholtz, Hermann (1925). Handbuch der physiologischen Optik. Vol. 3\. Leipzig: Voss. Archived from the original on September 27, 2018. Retrieved December 14, 2016.
12. ^ Hunziker, Hans-Werner (2006). Im Auge des Lesers: foveale und periphere Wahrnehmung – vom Buchstabieren zur Lesefreude [In the eye of the reader: foveal and peripheral perception – from letter recognition to the joy of reading]. Zürich: Transmedia Stäubli Verlag. ISBN 978-3-7266-0068-6.[page needed]
13. ^ Stone, JV (2011). "Footprints sticking out of the sand. Part 2: children's Bayesian priors for shape and lighting direction" (PDF). Perception. 40 (2): 175–90\. doi:10.1068/p6776. PMID 21650091. S2CID 32868278.
14. ^ Mamassian, Pascal; Landy, Michael; Maloney, Laurence T. (2002). "Bayesian Modelling of Visual Perception". In Rao, Rajesh P. N.; Olshausen, Bruno A.; Lewicki, Michael S. (eds.). Probabilistic Models of the Brain: Perception and Neural Function. Neural Information Processing. MIT Press. pp. 13–36\. ISBN 978-0-262-26432-7.
15. ^ "A Primer on Probabilistic Approaches to Visual Perception". Archived from the original on July 10, 2006. Retrieved October 14, 2010.
16. ^ Wagemans, Johan (November 2012). "A Century of Gestalt Psychology in Visual Perception". Psychological Bulletin. 138 (6): 1172–1217\. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.452.8394. doi:10.1037/a0029333. PMC 3482144. PMID 22845751.
17. ^ Wagemans, Johan; Elder, James H.; Kubovy, Michael; Palmer, Stephen E.; Peterson, Mary A.; Singh, Manish; von der Heydt, Rüdiger (November 2012). "A century of Gestalt psychology in visual perception: I. Perceptual grouping and figure-ground organization". Psychological Bulletin. 138 (6): 1172–1217\. doi:10.1037/a0029333. ISSN 1939-1455. PMC 3482144. PMID 22845751.
18. ^ Taylor, Stanford E. (November 1965). "Eye Movements in Reading: Facts and Fallacies". American Educational Research Journal. 2 (4): 187–202\. doi:10.2307/1161646. JSTOR 1161646.
19. ^ Yarbus, A. L. (1967). Eye movements and vision, Plenum Press, New York[page needed]
20. ^ Hunziker, H. W. (1970). "Visuelle Informationsaufnahme und Intelligenz: Eine Untersuchung über die Augenfixationen beim Problemlösen" [Visual information acquisition and intelligence: A study of the eye fixations in problem solving]. Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Ihre Anwendungen (in German). 29 (1/2).[page needed]
21. ^ Cohen, A. S. (1983). "Informationsaufnahme beim Befahren von Kurven, Psychologie für die Praxis 2/83" [Information recording when driving on curves, psychology in practice 2/83]. Bulletin der Schweizerischen Stiftung für Angewandte Psychologie.[page needed]
22. ^ Purves, Dale; Augustine, George J.; Fitzpatrick, David; Katz, Lawrence C.; LaMantia, Anthony-Samuel; McNamara, James O.; Williams, S. Mark (2001), "Types of Eye Movements and Their Functions", Neuroscience. 2nd edition, Sinauer Associates, retrieved July 1, 2025
23. ^ Liu, Meng; Zhan, Jiayu; Wang, Lihui (September 20, 2024). "Specified functions of the first two fixations in face recognition: Sampling the general-to-specific facial information". iScience. 27 (9). doi:10.1016/j.isci.2024.110686. ISSN 2589-0042. PMC 11378928. PMID 39246447.
24. ^ Carlson, Neil R.; Heth, C. Donald; Miller, Harold; Donahoe, John W.; Buskist, William; Martin, G. Neil; Schmaltz, Rodney M. (2009). Psychology the Science of Behaviour. Toronto Ontario: Pearson Canada. pp. 140–1. ISBN 978-0-205-70286-2.
25. ^ a b Moscovitch, Morris; Winocur, Gordon; Behrmann, Marlene (1997). "What Is Special about Face Recognition? Nineteen Experiments on a Person with Visual Object Agnosia and Dyslexia but Normal Face Recognition". Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. 9 (5): 555–604\. doi:10.1162/jocn.1997.9.5.555. PMID 23965118. S2CID 207550378.
26. ^ Yin, Robert K. (1969). "Looking at upside-down faces". Journal of Experimental Psychology. 81 (1): 141–5\. doi:10.1037/h0027474.
27. ^ Kanwisher, Nancy; McDermott, Josh; Chun, Marvin M. (June 1997). "The fusiform face area: a module in human extrastriate cortex specialized for face perception". The Journal of Neuroscience. 17 (11): 4302–11\. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.17-11-04302.1997. PMC 6573547. PMID 9151747.
28. ^ Gauthier, Isabel; Skudlarski, Pawel; Gore, John C.; Anderson, Adam W. (February 2000). "Expertise for cars and birds recruits brain areas involved in face recognition". Nature Neuroscience. 3 (2): 191–7\. doi:10.1038/72140. PMID 10649576. S2CID 15752722.
29. ^ Chang, Le; Tsao, Doris Y. (June 1, 2017). "The Code for Facial Identity in the Primate Brain". Cell. 169 (6): 1013–1028.e14. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2017.05.011. ISSN 0092-8674. PMC 8088389. PMID 28575666.
30. ^ "How the brain distinguishes between objects". MIT News. March 13, 2019. Retrieved October 10, 2019.
31. ^ Srivastava, Sanjana; Ben-Yosef, Guy; Boix, Xavier (February 8, 2019). Minimal Images in Deep Neural Networks: Fragile Object Recognition in Natural Images. arXiv:1902.03227. OCLC 1106329907.
32. ^ Ben-Yosef, Guy; Assif, Liav; Ullman, Shimon (February 2018). "Full interpretation of minimal images". Cognition. 171: 65–84\. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2017.10.006. hdl:1721.1/106887. ISSN 0010-0277. PMID 29107889. S2CID 3372558.
33. ^ Elsayed, Gamaleldin F.; Shankar, Shreya; Cheung, Brian; Papernot, Nicolas; Kurakin, Alex; Goodfellow, Ian; Sohl-Dickstein, Jascha (February 22, 2018). "Adversarial Examples that Fool both Computer Vision and Time-Limited Humans" (PDF). Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 31 (NeurIPS 2018). arXiv:1802.08195. OCLC 1106289156.
34. ^ Man with restored sight provides new insight into how vision develops
35. ^ Out Of Darkness, Sight: Rare Cases Of Restored Vision Reveal How The Brain Learns To See
36. ^ Poggio, Tomaso (1981). "Marr's Computational Approach to Vision". Trends in Neurosciences. 4: 258–262\. doi:10.1016/0166-2236(81)90081-3. S2CID 53163190.
37. ^ Marr, D (1982). Vision: A Computational Investigation into the Human Representation and Processing of Visual Information. MIT Press.[page needed]
38. ^ Rock, Irvin; DiVita, Joseph (1987). "A case of viewer-centered object perception". Cognitive Psychology. 19 (2): 280–293\. doi:10.1016/0010-0285(87)90013-2. PMID 3581759. S2CID 40154873.
39. ^ Pizlo, Zygmunt; Stevenson, Adam K. (1999). "Shape constancy from novel views". Perception & Psychophysics. 61 (7): 1299–1307\. doi:10.3758/BF03206181. ISSN 0031-5117. PMID 10572459. S2CID 8041318.
40. ^ 3D Shape, Z. Pizlo (2008) MIT Press
41. ^ Zhaoping, Li (2014). Understanding vision: theory, models, and data. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199564668.
42. ^ Zhaoping, L (2019). "A new framework for understanding vision from the perspective of the primary visual cortex". Current Opinion in Neurobiology. 58: 1–10\. doi:10.1016/j.conb.2019.06.001. PMID 31271931. S2CID 195806018.
43. ^ Hecht, Selig (April 1, 1937). "Rods, Cones, and the Chemical Basis of Vision". Physiological Reviews. 17 (2): 239–290\. doi:10.1152/physrev.1937.17.2.239. ISSN 0031-9333.
44. ^ Carlson, Neil R. (2013). "6". Physiology of Behaviour (11th ed.). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, US: Pearson Education Inc. p. 170\. ISBN 978-0-205-23939-9.
45. ^ a b Carlson, Neil R.; Heth, C. Donald (2010). "5". Psychology the science of behaviour (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, US: Pearson Education Inc. pp. 138–145. ISBN 978-0-205-64524-4.

## Further reading

[edit]

* Von Helmholtz, Hermann (1867). Handbuch der physiologischen Optik. Vol. 3\. Leipzig: Voss. Quotations are from the English translation produced by the Optical Society of America (1924–25): Treatise on Physiological Optics Archived September 27, 2018, at the Wayback Machine.

## External links

[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Sight and Vision.

Wikiquote has quotations related to Vision.

Look up vision in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

* The Organization of the Retina and Visual System
* Effect of Detail on Visual Perception by Jon McLoone, the Wolfram Demonstrations Project
* The Joy of Visual Perception, resource on the eye's perception abilities.
* VisionScience. Resource for Research in Human and Animal Vision A collection of resources in vision science and perception
* Vision and Psychophysics
* Vision, Scholarpedia Expert articles about Vision
* What are the limits of human vision?

Topics related to visual perception

* v
* t
* e

Mental processes

Cognition|

* Association
* Awareness
* Cognitive flexibility
* Cognitive liberty
* Forecasting
* affective
* Foresight
* Comprehension
* Consciousness
* Critical thinking
* Decision-making
* Imagination
* Intuition
* Problem solving
* methods
* strategies
* Prospection

Perception|

* Amodal
* Color
* RGB model
* Depth
* Form
* Haptic (Touch)
* Perception as interpretation
* Peripheral
* Social
* Sound
* Harmonics
* Pitch
* Speech
* Visual

Memory|

* Consolidation
* Encoding
* Storage
* Recall

Other|

* Attention
* Experiential avoidance
* Higher nervous activity
* Intention
* Ironic process theory
* Learning
* Mental fatigue
* Relational frame theory
* Mental set
* Thinking
* Thought suppression
* Volition

Category

* v
* t
* e

Sensation and perception

Processes
and
concepts|

| Sensation|

* Stimulus
* Sensory receptor
* Transduction (physiology)
* Sensory processing
* Active sensory system

|

Perception|

* Multimodal integration
* Awareness
* Consciousness
* Cognition
* Feeling
* Motion perception
* Qualia

Human|

| External|

| Sensory organs|

* Eyes
* Ears
* Inner ear
* Nose
* Mouth
* Skin

|

Sensory systems|

* Visual system (sense of vision)
* Auditory system (sense of hearing)
* Vestibular system (sense of balance)
* Olfactory system (sense of smell)
* Gustatory system (sense of taste)
* Somatosensory system (sense of touch)

Sensory cranial and spinal nerves|

* Optic (II)
* Vestibulocochlear (VIII)
* Olfactory (I)
* Facial (VII)
* Glossopharyngeal (IX)
* Trigeminal (V)
* Spinal

Cerebral cortices|

* Visual cortex
* Auditory cortex
* Vestibular cortex
* Olfactory cortex
* Gustatory cortex
* Somatosensory cortex

Perceptions|

* Visual perception (vision)
* Color
* Auditory perception (hearing)
* Equilibrioception (balance)
* Olfaction (smell)
* Gustation (taste or flavor)
* Touch
* mechanoreception
* nociception (pain)
* thermoception

Internal|

* Proprioception
* Hunger
* Thirst
* Suffocation
* Nausea
* Visceral pain

Nonhuman|

| Animal|

* Electroreception
* Magnetoreception
* Echolocation
* Infrared sensing in vampire bats
* Infrared sensing in snakes
* Surface wave detection
* Frog hearing
* Toad vision

|

Plant|

* Photomorphogenesis
* Gravitropism

Artificial|

* Robotic sensing
* Computer vision
* Machine hearing

Types of
sensory receptors|

| Mechanoreceptor|

* Baroreceptor
* Mechanotransduction
* Lamellar corpuscle
* Tactile corpuscle
* Merkel nerve ending
* Bulbous corpuscle
* Campaniform sensilla
* Slit sensilla
* Stretch receptor

|

Photoreceptor|

* Photoreceptor cell
* Cone cell
* Rod cell
* ipRGC
* Photopigment
* Aureochrome

Chemoreceptor|

* Taste receptor
* Olfactory receptor
* Osmoreceptor

Thermoreceptor|

* Cilium
* TRP channels

Nociceptor|

* Nociceptin receptor
* Juxtacapillary receptor

Disorders|

| Visual|

* Visual impairment
* Alice in Wonderland syndrome
* Amaurosis
* Anopsia
* Color blindness
* Diplopia
* Hemeralopia and Nyctalopia
* Optic neuropathy
* Oscillopsia
* Palinopsia
* Papilledema
* Photophobia
* Photopsia
* Polyopia
* Scotoma
* Stereoblindness
* Visual snow

|

Auditory|

* Amblyaudia
* Auditory agnosia
* Auditory hallucination
* Auditory verbal agnosia
* Cortical deafness
* Hearing loss
* Microwave auditory effect
* Music-specific disorders
* Palinopsia
* Spatial hearing loss
* Tinnitus

Vestibular|

* Vertigo
* BPPV
* Labyrinthine fistula
* Labyrinthitis
* Ménière's disease

Olfactory|

* Anosmia
* Dysosmia
* Hyperosmia
* Hyposmia
* Olfactory reference syndrome
* Parosmia
* Phantosmia

Gustatory|

* Ageusia
* Hypergeusia
* Hypogeusia
* Parageusia

Tactile|

* Astereognosis
* CMT disease
* Formication
* Hyperesthesia
* Hypoesthesia
* Paresthesia
* Tactile hallucination

Nociception (pain)|

* Hyperalgesia
* Hypoalgesia
* Pain dissociation
* Phantom pain

Proprioception|

* Asomatognosia
* Phantom limb syndrome
* Somatoparaphrenia
* Supernumerary phantom limb

Multimodal|

* Aura
* Agnosia
* Allochiria
* Derealization
* Hallucination
* HSAN
* Sensory processing disorder
* Synesthesia

Biases and errors|

* Illusion · Pareidolia

Category

* v
* t
* e

Optical illusions (list)

Illusions|

* Afterimage
* Ambigram
* Ambiguous image
* Ames room
* Autostereogram
* Barberpole
* Bezold
* Café wall
* Checker shadow
* Chubb
* Cornsweet
* Delboeuf
* Ebbinghaus
* Ehrenstein
* Flash lag
* Fraser spiral
* Gravity hill
* Grid
* Hering
* Impossible trident
* Irradiation
* Jastrow
* Lilac chaser
* Mach bands
* McCollough
* Müller-Lyer
* Necker cube
* Oppel-Kundt
* Orbison
* Penrose stairs
* Penrose triangle
* Peripheral drift
* Poggendorff
* Ponzo
* Rubin vase
* Sander
* Schroeder stairs
* Shepard tables
* Spinning dancer
* Ternus
* Vertical–horizontal
* White's
* Wundt
* Zöllner

Popular culture|

* Op art
* Trompe-l'œil
* Spectropia (1864 book)
* Ascending and Descending (1960 drawing)
* Waterfall (1961 drawing)
* The dress (2015 photograph)

Related|

* Accidental viewpoint
* Auditory illusions
* Illusions
* Tactile illusions
* Temporal illusion

* v
* t
* e

Vision in animals

Vision|

* Birds
* Chameleons
* Dinosaurs
* Fish
* Toads
* Mammals
* horses
* dogs
* cats

Eyes|

* Arthropod eye
* Compound eye
* Eagle eye
* Eye shine
* Simple eye in invertebrates
* Mammalian eye
* human
* Mollusc eye
* cephalopod
* gastropod
* Holochroal eye
* Parietal eye
* Schizochroal eye

Evolution|

* Evolution of the eye
* Evolution of color vision
* Evolution of color vision in primates

Coloration|

* Albinism
* Animal coloration
* Aposematism
* Camouflage
* Chromatophore
* Counter-illumination
* Countershading
* Crypsis
* Deimatic behaviour
* Disruptive coloration
* coincident
* Eyespot (mimicry)
* Mimicry
* Structural coloration
* Underwater camouflage

Related topics|

* Animal senses
* Blindness in animals
* Eyespot apparatus
* Feature detection
* Infrared sensing in snakes
* Monocular deprivation
* Ommatidium
* Palpebral (bone)
* Pseudopupil
* Rhopalium
* Underwater vision
* Visual perception

* v
* t
* e

Visualization of technical information

Fields|

* Biological data visualization
* Chemical imaging
* Crime mapping
* Data visualization
* Educational visualization
* Flow visualization
* Geovisualization
* Information visualization
* Mathematical visualization
* Medical imaging
* Molecular graphics
* Product visualization
* Scientific visualization
* Social visualization
* Software visualization
* Technical drawing
* User interface design
* Visual analytics
* Visual culture
* Volume visualization

Image
types|

* Chart
* Diagram
* Engineering drawing
* Graph of a function
* Ideogram
* Map
* Photograph
* Pictogram
* Plot
* Sankey diagram
* Schematic
* Skeletal formula
* Statistical graphics
* Table
* Technical drawings
* Technical illustration

People|

| Pre-19th century|

* Edmond Halley
* Charles-René de Fourcroy
* Joseph Priestley
* Gaspard Monge

|

19th century|

* Charles Dupin
* Adolphe Quetelet
* André-Michel Guerry
* William Playfair
* August Kekulé
* Charles Joseph Minard
* Francis Amasa Walker
* John Venn
* Oliver Byrne
* Matthew Sankey
* Charles Booth
* John Snow
* Florence Nightingale
* Karl Wilhelm Pohlke
* Toussaint Loua
* Francis Galton

Early 20th century|

* Edward Walter Maunder
* Otto Neurath
* W. E. B. Du Bois
* Henry Gantt
* Arthur Lyon Bowley
* Howard G. Funkhouser
* John B. Peddle
* Ejnar Hertzsprung
* Henry Norris Russell
* Max O. Lorenz
* Fritz Kahn
* Harry Beck
* Erwin Raisz

Mid 20th century|

* Jacques Bertin
* Rudolf Modley
* Arthur H. Robinson
* John Tukey
* Mary Eleanor Spear
* Edgar Anderson
* Howard T. Fisher

Late 20th century|

* Borden Dent
* Nigel Holmes
* William S. Cleveland
* George G. Robertson
* Bruce H. McCormick
* Catherine Plaisant
* Stuart Card
* Pat Hanrahan
* Edward Tufte
* Ben Shneiderman
* Michael Friendly
* Howard Wainer
* Clifford A. Pickover
* Lawrence J. Rosenblum
* Thomas A. DeFanti
* George Furnas
* Sheelagh Carpendale
* Cynthia Brewer
* Jock D. Mackinlay
* Alan MacEachren
* David Goodsell
* Kwan-Liu Ma
* Michael Maltz
* Leland Wilkinson
* Alfred Inselberg

Early 21st century|

* Ben Fry
* Jeffrey Heer
* Jessica Hullman
* Daniel A. Keim
* Gordon Kindlmann
* Aaron Koblin
* Christopher R. Johnson
* Manuel Lima
* David McCandless
* Mauro Martino
* John Maeda
* Miriah Meyer
* Tamara Munzner
* Ade Olufeko
* Hanspeter Pfister
* Hans Rosling
* Claudio Silva
* Moritz Stefaner
* Fernanda Viégas
* Martin Wattenberg
* Bang Wong
* Hadley Wickham

Related
topics|

* Cartography
* Chartjunk
* Color coding
* Computer graphics
* in computer science
* CPK coloring
* Graph drawing
* Graphic design
* Graphic organizer
* Imaging science
* Information art
* Information graphics
* Information science
* Misleading graph
* Neuroimaging
* Patent drawing
* Scientific modelling
* Spatial analysis
* Visual perception
* Volume cartography
* Volume rendering

* v
* t
* e

Evolutionary psychology

* History
* Evolutionary thought
* Theoretical foundations
* Adaptationism
* Cognitive revolution
* Cognitivism
* Gene selection theory
* Modern synthesis
* Criticism

Evolutionary
processes|

* Adaptations
* Altruism
* Cheating
* Hamiltonian spite
* Reciprocal
* Baldwin effect
* By-products
* Evolutionarily stable strategy
* Exaptation
* Fitness
* Inclusive
* Kin selection
* Inbreeding avoidance
* Kin recognition
* Parental investment
* Parent–offspring conflict
* Mismatch
* Natural selection
* Sexual selection
* Costly signaling
* Male/female intrasexual competition
* Mate choice
* Sexual dimorphism
* Social selection
* Species-typical behavior

Areas|

| Cognition /
Emotion|

* Affect
* Display
* Display rules
* Facial expression
* Behavioral modernity
* Cognitive module/modularity of mind
* Adaptive unconscious/Unconscious cognition
* Automatic and controlled processes
* Cognitive specialization
* Computational theory of mind
* Domain generality
* Domain specificity/learning
* Dual process theory
* Cognitive tradeoff hypothesis
* Evolution of the brain
* Evolution of nervous systems
* Fight-or-flight response
* Arachnophobia
* Basophobia
* Ophidiophobia
* Folk biology/taxonomy
* Folk psychology/theory of mind
* Intelligence
* Flynn effect
* Wason selection task
* Motor control/skill
* Multitasking
* Numerical cognition
* Number sense
* Approximate number system
* Parallel individuation system
* Sleep
* Visual perception
* Color vision
* Eye
* Naïve physics

|

Culture|

* Aesthetics
* Literary criticism
* Musicology
* Anthropology
* Biological
* Crime
* Language
* Origin
* Psychology
* Speech
* Morality
* Moral foundations
* Religion
* Origin
* Universals

Development|

* Attachment
* Bonding
* Affectional/maternal/paternal bond
* Caregiver deprivation
* Childhood attachment
* Cinderella effect
* Cognitive development
* Education
* Language acquisition
* Personality development
* Socialization

Human factors /
Mental health|

* Cognitive ergonomics
* Computer-mediated communication
* Engineering psychology
* Human–computer interaction
* Media naturalness theory
* Neuroergonomics
* Depression
* Digital media use and mental health
* Hypophobia
* Imprinted brain hypothesis
* Mind-blindness
* Psychological effects of Internet use
* Rank theory of depression
* Schizophrenia
* Screen time
* Smartphones and pedestrian safety
* Social aspects of television
* Societal effects of cars
* Distracted driving
* Lead–crime hypothesis
* Mobile phones and driving safety
* Texting while driving

Sex|

* Activity
* Adult attachment
* Age disparity
* Arousal
* Concealed ovulation
* Coolidge effect
* Desire
* Fantasy
* Hormonal motivation
* Incest taboo
* Westermarck effect
* Jealousy
* Mate guarding
* Mating preferences
* Mating strategies
* Orientation
* Ovulatory shift hypothesis
* Pair bond
* Physical/Sexual attraction
* Sexuality/male/female
* Sexy son hypothesis

Sex differences|

* Aggression
* Autism
* Cognition
* Crime
* Division of labour
* Emotional intelligence
* Empathising–systemising theory
* Gender role
* Intelligence
* Memory
* Mental health
* Narcissism
* Neuroscience
* Schizophrenia
* Substance abuse
* Suicide
* Variability hypothesis

Related subjects|

| Academic disciplines|

* Behavioral/evolutionary economics
* Behavioral epigenetics/genetics
* Affective/behavioral/cognitive/evolutionary neuroscience
* Biocultural anthropology
* Biolinguistics
* Biological psychiatry
* Cognitive psychology
* Cognitive science
* Cross-cultural psychology
* Ethology
* Evolutionary biology
* Evolutionary medicine
* Functional psychology
* Neuropsychology
* Philosophy of mind
* Population genetics
* Primatology
* Sociobiology

|

Research topics|

* Cultural evolution
* Evolutionary epistemology
* Great ape language
* Human–animal communication
* Missing heritability problem
* Number sense in animals
* Primate cognition
* Unit of selection
* Coevolution
* Cultural group selection
* Dual inheritance theory
* Fisher's principle
* Group selection
* Hologenome theory
* Lamarckism/acquired characteristics
* Population
* Punctuated equilibrium
* Recent human evolution
* Species
* Species complex
* Transgenerational epigenetic inheritance
* Trivers–Willard hypothesis

Theoretical positions|

* Cultural selection theory
* Determinism/indeterminism
* Biological determinism
* Connectionism
* Cultural determinism
* Environmental determinism
* Nature versus nurture
* Psychological nativism
* Social constructionism
* Social determinism
* Standard social science model
* Functionalism
* Memetics
* Multilineal evolution
* Neo-Darwinism
* Neoevolutionism
* Sociocultural evolution
* Unilineal evolution

* Evolutionary psychologists
*  Evolutionary psychology
*  Psychology portal
*  Evolutionary biology portal

Authority control databases

National|

* Germany
* United States
* France
* BnF data
* Japan
* Czech Republic
* 2
* Israel

Other|

* İslâm Ansiklopedisi

*[v]: View this template
*[t]: Discuss this template
*[e]: Edit this template
*[c.]: circa