A new framework for understanding vision from the perspective of the primary visual cortex

Visual attention selects only a tiny fraction of visual input informationfor further processing. Selection starts in the primary visual cortex (V1), which creates abottom-up saliency map to guide the fovea to selected visual locations via gaze shifts.This motivates a new framework that views visionas consisting of encoding, selection, and decoding stages, placingselection on center stage. It suggests a massive loss of non-selectedinformation from V1 downstream along the visual pathway.Hence, feedback from downstream visual cortical areas to V1 for better decoding (recognition),through analysis-by-synthesis, should query for additional information and be mainly directed atthe foveal region. Accordingly, non-foveal vision is not only poorer in spatial resolution,but also more susceptible to many illusions.

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