Early Visual Processing: Feature Detection or Spatial Filtering?

The visual system has been extensively studied for more than a century with both psychophysical and physiological techniques. This research has provided us with detailed knowledge concerning many aspects of how the early stages of the system operate. We understand (in considerable detail) the optics of the eye, the nature of the transformation of light into neural activity, and the first stages of the processing of this neural information. Not only do we now have much information on retinal processing, but also on the nature of the transformations at the first two central levels (the lateral geniculate nucleus and the striate cortex), although what happens to visual information beyond that in later cortical areas is still only dimly understood.

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