Does the brain’s ventral visual pathway compute object shape?

Published on October 20, 2022

Imagine you’re a detective trying to solve a complex case. You have all the evidence you need, but something is missing. You know that the shape of clues is crucial in identifying the criminal, but how does your brain process this information? Scientists have been investigating whether the ventral visual pathway, which is responsible for object recognition, computes object shape accurately. Recent studies suggest that while the brain does analyze local features like structure and spatial arrangement, it may not directly represent global shape. Instead, other regions of the brain might contribute to shape perception and recognition. This discovery raises fascinating questions about how our brains perceive and understand objects. To delve deeper into this research and unravel the mysteries of object recognition, check out the full article!

A rich behavioral literature has shown that human object recognition is supported by a representation of shape that is tolerant to variations in an object’s appearance. Such ‘global’ shape representations are achieved by describing objects via the spatial arrangement of their local features, or structure, rather than by the appearance of the features themselves. However, accumulating evidence suggests that the ventral visual pathway – the primary substrate underlying object recognition – may not represent global shape.

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