Visual Object Processing

We present an overview of the functional and anatomical pathways and steps involved in going from a pattern of photoreceptor activations in the retina to recognizing an object in the world. Our focus is the geniculostriate pathway and the ventral processing stream of the cortex, which play a dominant role in object processing in humans. For recognition to occur, there must be the generation of a representation that can be matched to memory. Here we focus on the perceptual organizing factors, such as grouping and segmentation, that play an initial role in generating that which will be matched to memory. We then examine more complex representations and how they might be generated, including 3D forms and objects. We also discuss theories of object recognition, contrasting, for example, theories that posit that particular views of objects are matched to views in memory, versus structural approaches which posit that 3D shapes and parts are matched to similar representations in memory. The plusses and minuses of different theories of object recognition are considered. Keywords: object recognition; perceptual organization