Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Concept Videos

Perceptual Constancy01:12

Perceptual Constancy

Perceptual constancy is the ability to recognize that objects remain consistent and unchanged even when their appearance varies due to changes in sensory input. There are four main types of perceptual constancy: size constancy, shape constancy, color constancy, and brightness constancy.
Size constancy is the recognition that an object remains the same size, even when its image on the retina changes. For instance, a bus is perceived to be large enough to carry people, even if it looks tiny from...
Vision01:24

Vision

Vision is the result of light being detected and transduced into neural signals by the retina of the eye. This information is then further analyzed and interpreted by the brain. First, light enters the front of the eye and is focused by the cornea and lens onto the retina—a thin sheet of neural tissue lining the back of the eye. Because of refraction through the convex lens of the eye, images are projected onto the retina upside-down and reversed.
Visual Agnosia01:12

Visual Agnosia

Visual agnosia is a condition characterized by the inability to recognize visually presented objects despite having normal vision. For instance, a person with visual agnosia can describe the shape and color of an object but cannot identify or name it. This impairment does not affect their visual field, acuity, color vision, brightness discrimination, language, or memory. An example of this condition in a social setting is someone at a dinner party asking for "that silver thing with a round end"...
Association Areas of the Cortex01:21

Association Areas of the Cortex

Association areas are regions of the cerebral cortex that do not have a specific sensory or motor function. Instead, they integrate and interpret information from various sources to enable higher cognitive processes such as memory, learning, and decision-making. Some key association areas include the following:
Prefrontal Association Area: This area is located in the frontal lobe and is involved in planning, decision-making, and moderating social behavior. It connects with primary motor areas,...
Prosopagnosia01:24

Prosopagnosia

Prosopagnosia, also known as face blindness, is the inability to recognize faces. In severe cases, individuals with prosopagnosia may not recognize close family members, including parents and spouses, by their faces. For instance, someone with prosopagnosia might walk past their child in a crowd, only realizing their mistake upon noticing their child's distinctive backpack or favorite jacket. Prosopagnosia specifically impairs facial recognition, while the recognition of other objects or...
Difference from Background: Limit of Detection01:05

Difference from Background: Limit of Detection

The limit of detection (LOD) is the smallest amount of analyte that can be distinguished from the background noise. The LOD value corresponds to the concentration at which the analyte signal is three times larger than the standard deviation of the blank signal. Below this value, the analyte signal cannot be differentiated from the background noise. It is calculated by dividing the calibration slope by 3 times the standard deviation of the blank signals.
The LOD indicates the presence or absence...

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Development of Crowding Distance in Children Is Faster and Later Than Visual Acuity and Better Predicts Reading Performance.

Investigative ophthalmology & visual science·2026
Same author

An increasingly efficient narrowband object-recognition channel along the ventral stream.

bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology·2026
Same author

EasyEyes: Crowded dynamic fixation for online psychophysics.

Journal of vision·2026
Same author

Today, Tomorrow, and Overmorrow: The Acquisition of Deictic Temporal Terms in English and German.

Open mind : discoveries in cognitive science·2025
Same author

Human V4 size predicts crowding distance.

Nature communications·2025
Same author

EasyEyes: Crowded Dynamic Fixation for Online Psychophysics.

bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology·2025
Same journal

Neural timescales from a computational perspective.

Nature neuroscience·2026
Same journal

Author Correction: Spinal cord Tau pathology induces tactile deficits and cognitive impairment in Alzheimer's disease via dysregulation of CCK neurons.

Nature neuroscience·2026
Same journal

Hippocampal theta sweeps indicate goal direction during navigation.

Nature neuroscience·2026
Same journal

Just how goal-directed are hippocampal theta sweeps, anyway?

Nature neuroscience·2026
Same journal

Goal-directed hippocampal theta sweeps during memory-guided navigation.

Nature neuroscience·2026
Same journal

Connectomic evidence that ordered activity drives neuromuscular network formation.

Nature neuroscience·2026
See all related articles

Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 29, 2026

Investigating Object Representations in the Macaque Dorsal Visual Stream Using Single-unit Recordings
07:08

Investigating Object Representations in the Macaque Dorsal Visual Stream Using Single-unit Recordings

Published on: August 1, 2018

The uncrowded window of object recognition.

Denis G Pelli1, Katharine A Tillman

  • 1Department of Psychology and Center for Neural Science, New York University, 6 Washington Place, New York, New York 10003, USA. denis.pelli@nyu.edu

Nature Neuroscience
|October 2, 2008
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Vision is limited by how close objects are, not their size. This "crowding" phenomenon follows a universal principle, the Bouma law, impacting object recognition and visual search speed.

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Jun 29, 2026

Investigating Object Representations in the Macaque Dorsal Visual Stream Using Single-unit Recordings
07:08

Investigating Object Representations in the Macaque Dorsal Visual Stream Using Single-unit Recordings

Published on: August 1, 2018

Area of Science:

  • Visual perception
  • Cognitive psychology
  • Neuroscience

Background:

  • Vision is typically limited by object spacing, not size.
  • Object recognition involves feature detection and integration.
  • Visual crowding occurs when objects are too close, leading to feature confusion.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To review studies on visual crowding across various tasks.
  • To identify a universal principle governing crowding.
  • To understand the implications of crowding for visual processing.

Main Methods:

  • Review of existing research on crowding in tasks like letter recognition, face recognition, and visual search.
  • Analysis of data from grating discrimination and selective attention studies.
  • Examination of the Bouma law as a unifying principle.

Main Results:

  • Crowding is a universal principle in vision, described by the Bouma law.
  • Critical spacing to prevent crowding is constant for all objects but weaker for dissimilar ones.
  • Critical spacing is independent of object position in the cortex but scales with distance from fixation in the visual field.

Conclusions:

  • The 'uncrowded window' size, defined by critical spacing, limits object recognition outside this area.
  • Crowding significantly impacts the speed of essential visual tasks like reading and visual search.
  • Understanding crowding is crucial for explaining the limits of human visual perception.