TUESDAY, 26 January
Where to go now with the What & Where pathway model
(organised by E. De Haan, Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
The primate visual brain is classically portrayed as a large number of separate ‘maps’, each dedicated to the processing of specific visual cues, such as colour, motion or faces and their many features. In order to understand this fractionated architecture, the concept of cortical ‘pathways’ or ‘streams’ was introduced. In the currently prevailing view, postulated by Goodale & Milner (1992), the different maps are organized into two major pathways, one involved in recognition and memory (the ventral stream or ‘what’ pathway) and the other in the programming of action (the dorsal stream or ‘where’ pathway). Now, this model appears generally accepted and features prominently in text books. However recently, a number of basic aspects of this model have been questioned, such as the number of pathways (e.g. Rossetti et al, 2003), the independence of the two pathways (e.g. Schenk & McIntosh, 2010), the dorsal route as a visual processing steam (Jackson, 2010), and the idea of hierarchical processing (e.g. De Haan & Cowey, 2011). The main goal of this symposium concerns the question whether we need to adapt the current model or move away towards a conceptually new description of the visual cortex.
15.00 EDWARD DE HAAN (Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
The Ventral Stream; what about hierarchy?
15.40 Floor discussion
15.50 THOMAS SCHENK (München, Germany)
What about separate, parallel processing streams?
16.30 Floor discussion
16.40 Coffee break
17.00 STHEPHEN JACKSON (Nottingham, UK)
The Dorsal Stream and Optic Ataxia: Balint or Holmes?
17.40 Floor discussion
17.50 MELVYN GOODALE (London, Ontario, Canada)
Perception and action twenty years on
18.30 Floor discussion
18.40 General discussion
References
De Haan & Cowey, A. (2011) On the usefulness of the “What” and “Where” pathways in vision. TICS, 15, 460-466
Goodale, M.A. and Milner, A.D. (1992) Separate visual pathways for perception and action. Trends Neurosci, 15, 20-25.
Jackson, S.R. (2010) Is the visual dorsal stream really very visual after all? Cognitive Neuroscience, 2, 68-69
Rossetti, Y., Pisella, L., & Vighetto, A. (2003). Optic ataxia revisited: Visually guided action versus immediate visuomotor control. Exp Brain Res, 153, 171–179.
Schenk, T. and McIntosh, R.D. (2010): Do we have independent visual streams for perception and action? Cogn Neurosci, 1, 52-62.