Parallel Processing Strategies of the Primate Visual System

By Jonathan J. Nassi, Edward M. Callaway. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2009

785 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Incoming sensory information is sent to the brain along modality-specific channels corresponding to the five senses. Each of these channels further parses the incoming signals into parallel streams to provide a compact, efficient input to the brain. Ultimately, these parallel input signals must be elaborated on and integrated in the cortex to provide a unified and coherent percept. Recent studies in the primate visual cortex have greatly contributed to our understanding of how this goal is accomplished. Multiple strategies including retinal tiling, hierarchical and parallel processing and modularity, defined spatially and by cell type-specific connectivity, are used by the visual system to recover the intricate detail of our visual surroundings.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Molecular Biology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b8169a66c70944a720e15edbeb69cb0777abf5d8

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Citations in the corpus

Egocentric Spatial Representation in Action and Perception (2009, background): “Goodale and Milner suggest that the illusion arises due to ‘‘inappropriate size constancy scaling’’ (Gregory 2005): the ventral stream treats the relative sizes of the disc and the circles in the display as a contextual, pictorial depth cue.10 In 2a, the circles in 10 Relative-size is a ‘‘contextual”
An opportunity cost model of subjective effort and task performance (2013, positive): “The mind accomplishes many tasks at the same time because there are a large number of mechanisms that act in parallel (Alexander & Crutcher 1990; Evans 2008; Fodor 1983; Minsky 1985; Nassi & Callaway 2009; Rousselet et al. 2002; Rummelhart et al. 1986; Sigman & Dehaene 2008; Sperber 1994).”
Closed-loop and activity-guided optogenetic control. (2015, neutral): “A straightforward example for the relevance of this point of view is sensory processing, where the existence of ''parallel pathways'' has been well-studied for decades (e.g., Nassi and Callaway, 2009 for a review of parallel pathways in the primate visual system).”
An Interoceptive Predictive Coding Model of Conscious Presence (2011, background): “First, in contrast to exteroceptive (particularly visual) processing (Felleman and Van Essen, 1991; Nassi and Callaway, 2009), evidence for hierarchical organization of interoceptive processing and autonomic control is less clear.”
Task‐specific topology of brain networks supporting working memory and inhibition (2024, background): “By providing additional routes for neural signaling, weak connections may endow the network with enhanced resilience against localized disruptions, ensuring sustained cognitive function even in the face of potential perturbations (X. Liu et al., 2022; Nassi & Callaway, 2009).”