Reverse Engineering the Vision System

The vision system is perhaps the most well understood part of the neocortex. The input from the eyes consists of a set of images made up of pixels that are densely packed in the fovea and less so in the periphery. Each pixel is represented by a vector of attributes such as color, brightness, spatial and temporal derivatives. Pixels from each eye are registered in the lateral geniculate nucleus and projected to the cortex where they are processed by a hierarchy of array processors that detect features and patterns and compute their attributes, state, and relationships. These array processors consist of Cortical Computational Units (CCUs) made up of cortical hypercolumns and their underlying thalamic and other subcortical nuclei. Each CCU is capable of performing complex computational functions and communicating with other CCUs at the same and higher and lower levels. The entire visual processing hierarchy generates a rich, colorful, dynamic internal representation that is consciously perceived to be external reality. It is suggested that it may be possible to reverse engineer the human vision system in the near future [1].