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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Malcolm Young
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This paper is organized approximately into two halves. In the first half, I review evidence about the structure of the visual system, and I use that evidence to frame what I think are widely held but often implicit ideas about how it works, namely that vision is principally analysis of retinal input. These ideas have been strongly influenced by engineering approaches; form a default view of the visual system that suffuses all the language used to describe it (at least in visual neuroscience); and are to some extent supported by the structural evidence. In the second half, I explore some inconvenient facts from neuroanatomy and neurophysiology which are quite uncomfortable for the traditional view. I then set out a contrary view of how structure and function are linked in the visual system, which is a neurobiological variety of the quite developed view in psychophysics that vision is better understood as knowledge-rich inference. Finally, I explore some of the ramifications of this view for neurophysiological understanding of how the visual system might operate during normal vision.
Author(s): Young MP
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Spatial Vision
Year: 2000
Volume: 13
Issue: 2-3
Pages: 137-146
Print publication date: 01/01/2000
ISSN (print): 0169-1015
ISSN (electronic): 1568-5683
Publisher: Brill
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156856800741162
DOI: 10.1163/156856800741162
PubMed id: 11198227
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