Color Color in the Brain: The What System

Where and What

Visual information is processed along parallel tracks: different kinds of neurons in the retina are wired up to the photoreceptors in different ways, to extract different kinds
of information. Some cells are sensitive to movement, others to cone opponency, and others to spatial contrast. Within each track, information is communicated along a
series of hierarchical stages beginning with these retinal neurons, moving via the optic nerve to the thalamus and on to primary visual cortex (V1) and then higher
cortical regions (V2 and up) where it is ultimately integrated to produce our experience of motion, color and form. One useful model divides the neocortex of the visual
brain into two broad subdivisions, a dorsal stream involving brain areas on the top (dorsal surface) of the brain, and ventral stream involving brain areas on the bottom of
the brain. These two streams, referred to as the Where pathway and the What pathway, are concerned with extracting where an object is located in visual space (and
where the viewer is located in reference to the external world), and what the object is (what color, shape, texture). The Where system is thought to be more primitive
(evolutionarily older) than the What system, and is responsible for the perception of motion, space, position, three-dimensionality, figure/ground segregation, and the
overall organization of the scene. This system is colorblind, has high contrast sensitivity, operates quickly, and has a slightly lower acuity than the What system. The
What system provides us with the ability to identify objects, faces and color.

In David Ingle's experiment, a goldfish has been trained to swim to a

patch of a given color for a rewarda piece of liver. It swims to the green
patch regardless of the exact setting of the three projectors' inten- sities.
The behavior is strikingly similar to the perceptual result in humans.
From Hubel, Eye Brain and Vision, Scientific American Press 1995.

Set up for a Land Color Constancy Demonstration.

Two identical Mondrian displays are illuminated with different relative mixtures of red, green and blue light, yet the color appearance of each of the regions of the Mondrian remains the same.

Color Constancy and Edwin H. Land

Color constancy is the visual phenomenon that the perceived color of an object remains relatively constant under varying illuminants (so long as the illuminant covers a
broad range of wavelengths). Color constancy is achieved because the brain computes color by determining local cone response ratios. When comparing the responses
of a number of cones over a local area, the brain is comparing the ranges of wavelengths reflected by different objects in the visual scene. This allows the brain to

Created by : Kate Ciurej 08 and Donna Yee 11

Created: July 9, 2008
Maintained By: Bevil Conway
Last Modified:July 21, 2013
Expires: July 21, 2013