Visual information that comes to the cortex is processed in the occipital lobe of the brain and then can take either the dorsal (ôwhereö) or ventral (ôwhatö) visual pathway; in the dorsal pathway, visual information is projected into the parietal lobe, and in the ventral pathway, visual information is projected into the temporal lobe (Dawson & Medler, Dorsal; ôCortical Functions and Their Measurement: Vision as a Prototypeö). The dorsal pathway hypothesis is that this pathway plays the primary role in ôspatial localization of stimuli,ö where the parietal lobe receives input from the auditory and somatosensory centers of the brain as well as from the dorsal pathway to form a ôspatial representation of the worldö (Dawson & Medler, Dorsal). It is also hypothesized that the dorsal pathway is an ôaction pathwayö that calculates the spatial relations that exist between the organism and its environment (Dawson & Medler, Dorsal). The ventral pathway is said to play the primary role in identifying objects and is thought to be a ôperception pathway,ö where spatial relations among components of objects are computed to enable their identification (Dawson & Medler, Ventral).
The behavioral control theory asserts that actively examining an external object creates an internal model of it in the brain that allows the viewer to subconsciously manipulate it and figure out how it will react to applied actions (Rybak et al.). The conscious perception theory asserts that ôConscious perception enables access to widespread brain sources,ö evokes selective attention, and enables working memory functions, learning, voluntary control over motor functions, and access to ôselfö (Baars).
ôCortical Functions and Their Measurement: Vision as a Prototype.ö http://astro.ocis.temple.edu/~pak/vision.ppt
Baars, Bernard J. ôThe Global Brainweb: An Update on Global Workspace Theory.ö Scienc
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