Return to search

The “Gist” of Early Visual Processing

Visual information is processed by two separate visual pathways. One is the magnocellular visual pathway (M-pathway), which carries high temporal frequency information but low spatial frequency information. The other is the parvocellular visual pathway (P-pathway), which carries low temporal information but high spatial information. Kveraga and colleagues (2007) presented participants with high and low spatial frequency images and found that participants made faster and more accurate categorization responses to the low spatial frequency images. They hypothesized this was due to low spatial frequency “gist” information being rapidly carried by the M-pathway. Using diffuse light and hand posture manipulations, we replicated the advantage for low spatial frequency (LSF) images in both experiments, and also found a larger advantage for LSF information when biasing the M-pathway (using hand posture). We were unable to inhibit the M-pathway using red diffuse light. Thus, it does appear “gist” processing is uniquely carried by the M-pathway.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:OTU.1807/33362
Date21 November 2012
CreatorsChan, David
ContributorsPratt, Jay
Source SetsLibrary and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada
Languageen_ca
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis

Page generated in 0.0021 seconds