Analysis and synthesis of visual images in the brain: Evidence for pattern theory

At each moment in time, we perceive a very small fragment of the world through our retinas, yet our subjective perception of the visual world in front of us is rather clear, coherent and complete. Often we see things that are not even there. This is because what we perceive is actually a 'virtual' visual world that is created in our minds - a product of the interaction between our experience, prior knowledge and the incoming sensory data. This world is dynamic and plastic. It depends on the behavioral demands imposed on us and the statistics of our experiences. In this lecture, I will present neurophysiological evidence that suggests that the early visual cortex participates in many levels of visual processing underlying the generation and the representation of this subjective visual world in our brain.