Lecture 11

What is the ventral (what) pathway's function?
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What is the ventral (what) pathway's function?
Simple cells looking for things such as the color green, triangles, hands, etc. Perceiving colors, object identification, where naming occurs, and conscious identification.
What is the dorsal (where) pathway's function?
Where light makes contact with muscles and guiding movements, like running through the woods and dodging trees. Motor control and unconscious action.
What did single cell recordings tell us about the color area of the ventral (what) pathway?
Cells respond to individual colors with a spatial organization. The rainbow is laid out spatially and neurologically confirms Newton's Color Wheel.
What is the object discrimination task and what did it show?
Monkeys were trained to associate a particular object with a food reward. If you remove the "what" area of the brain, the monkeys can no longer discriminate between objects like a purple triangle and green cube. They cannot do the "what" task but CAN do the "where" task.
What is the landmark discrimination task and what did it show?
Monkeys were trained to choose the location closer to the landmark in order to receive a reward. If you remove the "where" area, the monkeys can no longer discriminate between finding the landmark of a cylinder to two squares. They cannot do the "where" task but CAN do the "what" task.
What are some key differences between perception in the ventral (what) pathway and the dorsal (where) pathway?
The ventral (what) pathway is conscious and the dorsal (where) pathway is unconscious.

The ventral (what) pathway is more distorted and can be tricked by expectations, we perceive objects here as closer than they appear.

The dorsal (where) pathway is more accurate and reflexive, if told to reach for an object we don't know the distance of, we can do it with great accuracy.

They are truly separate perceptions.
Where do binocular cells usually project to?
The dorsal (where) pathway.
Where do motion perception cells tend to end up?
The dorsal (where) pathway.
Where do color perception cells tend to end up?
The ventral (what) pathway.
What are some examples of things that damage to separate areas of the cortex can cause?
Loss of or impairment of motion perception, color, object naming, facial recognition, etc.
What is part of the brain always looking for and why?Faces. Never turned off, is why you see faces in everyday objects. Better to have false alarms rather than misses. Example of enrichment, but here order is added to randomness: When we see a "face" on mars it is not often attributed to randomness as we do with naturally formed clouds.Descartes was wrong. What is the mind actually like?Your mind is in your brain. Pieces of your mind are linked to physical structure in the brain. When you lose these pieces of structure, you lose part of your mind and what makes you, you.What do we do to perceive objects?1. Group parts into objects. (Which parts belong to what objects or who?) 2. Segregating them from other objects. (Perceptual Segregation, This piece belongs to this object, these pieces belong to this person, segregating these into distinct objects, etc.) 3. Identifying what they are.What is perceptual segregation?The perceptual separation of one object from another. There is a "mental razor" that decides the cut-off of one object, sound, etc, from another. This is affected by human factors such as expectations, spacing, color, etc.Is perceptual segregation rule-based or law-based?The vast majority of psychology is rule-based. It is not about law-based processes. The majority of the research is based on the assumption that the brain is like a computer.