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Visual System

Visual System

Light enters the eye through the cornea, a transparent, dome-shaped surface covering the surface of the eyeball that helps to direct and focus incoming light. This light is then channeled toward the pupil, an adjustable opening whose size is controlled by the iris. The iris, a pigmented muscle, regulates the amount of light entering the eye by contracting or dilating the pupil, thereby ensuring optimal light levels for clear vision.
Once through the pupil, the light passes through the lens, a...

Vision

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.

Depth Perception and Spatial Vision

Depth Perception and Spatial Vision

Depth perception is the ability to perceive objects three-dimensionally. It relies on two types of cues: binocular and monocular. Binocular cues depend on the combination of images from both eyes and how the eyes work together. Since the eyes are in slightly different positions, each eye captures a slightly different image. This disparity between images, known as binocular disparity, helps the brain interpret depth. When the brain compares these images, it determines the distance to an object.

Visual Agnosia

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...

Prosopagnosia

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...

Parallel Processing

Parallel Processing

The brain processes sensory information rapidly due to parallel processing, which involves sending data across multiple neural pathways at the same time. This method allows the brain to manage various sensory qualities, such as shapes, colors, movements, and locations, all concurrently. For instance, when observing a forest landscape, the brain simultaneously processes the movement of leaves, the shapes of trees, the depth between them, and the various shades of green. This enables a quick and...

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Feb 17, 2026

Monocular Visual Deprivation and Ocular Dominance Plasticity Measurement in the Mouse Primary Visual Cortex

Monocular Visual Deprivation and Ocular Dominance Plasticity Measurement in the Mouse Primary Visual Cortex

Published on: February 8, 2020

Domain-general and domain-specific neural changes underlying visual expertise.

Farah Martens¹, Jessica Bulthé¹, Christine van Vliet¹

¹Brain and Cognition, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Leuven (KU Leuven), Belgium.

|December 11, 2017

Summary

Expertise shapes brain activity differently across domains. While some neural changes are specific to the area of expertise, like bird or mineral identification, others in the frontal lobe are general. This reveals domain-specific and domain-general effects of expertise on the brain.

Keywords:

Object recognition Visual expertise fMRI

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Author Spotlight: Insights into Visual Cortex Research Through Wide-View fMRI Mapping

Author Spotlight: Insights into Visual Cortex Research Through Wide-View fMRI Mapping

Published on: December 8, 2023

Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Cognitive Psychology
Visual Expertise Research

Background:

Visual expertise significantly alters neural processing across various specialized domains.
The relationship between neural changes induced by different expertise domains remains largely unexplored.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate and contrast expertise-related neural changes in two distinct domains: ornithology (bird expertise) and mineralogy (mineral expertise).
To determine if neural changes associated with expertise are domain-specific or domain-general using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

Main Methods:

Employed large-scale univariate and multi-voxel functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) analyses.
Conducted multivariate generalization analyses to assess the specificity of neural effects.
Contrasted neural processing changes in individuals with high expertise in ornithology versus mineralogy.

Main Results:

Identified distributed expertise-related neural changes in high-level visual cortex for both bird and mineral expertise.
Observed domain-specific effects in high-level visual cortex, meaning changes were unique to the expertise domain.
Found domain-general expertise effects in the frontal lobe, indicating shared neural mechanisms across different expertise domains.
Bird expertise also showed effects extending to low-level visual regions and the frontal lobe.

Conclusions:

Expertise induces a combination of both domain-specific and domain-general neural processing changes.
Neural changes in high-level visual cortex are largely specific to the domain of expertise.
The frontal lobe exhibits domain-independent neural changes related to expertise, suggesting shared cognitive control or learning mechanisms.