PSYA01H3 Chapter Notes -Visual Cortex, Torsten Wiesel, Visual Agnosia
Document Summary
Perception is the (rapid, automatic, and unconscious) process by which we recognize what is represented by the information provided by our sense organs. Optic nerves send info to the thalamus primary visual cortex (occipital lobe) in turn neurons in the primary visual cortex send info to 2 levels of the visual association cortex. The higher levels of the perceptual process interact with memories: the viewer recognizes familiar objects and learns the appearance of new, unfamiliar ones. David hubel and torsten wiesel conducted an experiment using microelectrodes. They connected these microelectrodes to regions of the visual system of certain animals (to detect action potentials produced by individual neurons). The animals were anaesthetized and this causes them to be unconscious but their nerve impulses still work, as they should. When they moved the stimuli around they located the largest effect on the electrical activity. They concluded that the geography of the visual field is retained in the primary visual cortex.
