A new understanding of Visual Perception

How we perceive the world around us has stirred immense curiosity among vision scientists for centuries. Limitless research has been carried out, and countless books and papers have been written over that period, but to this day our understanding of how we perceive the world is purely theoretical. What is even more astounding is that most of the standard theories are logically flawed.

The primary reason for writing this book is to record the proven results of all experimental observations tests that I have carried out over the past decade. It was a slow and tedious exercise, but once I made my first few discoveries, I knew that they were only tiny parts of a large jigsaw. I was determined to complete this jigsaw so that I could arrive at the first proven and logical understanding of the visual process. This process was carried out in a detailed study using natural observation and occlusion tests.

Coming from a rural farming background I grew up with nature. I did engineering at second level in college and, since the age of twenty, I have been involved with many different inventions and, hence, observation of any unusual phenomenon has always attracted my interest. My first interest in vision was piqued in a very simple way. When playing golf, I was always amazed at the direction other players aimed at when driving the ball off the tee box, and similarly in the sport of clay pigeon shooting where there is large discrepancy in accuracy when clays come from different directions. Many golf players set up on an unmarked tee box believing that they are aiming down the centre of the fairway, whereas they may sometimes be aiming down the left or right side of the fairway, and even at a different fairway altogether!

In the sport of clay pigeon shooting, participants are always more inaccurate with clays coming from a particular side. That is, shooters who shoot off their right shoulder, are usually right-eye dominant, and miss more clays coming from the left than coming from the right. Similarly, marksmen who shoot off their left shoulder are usually left-eye dominant and miss more clays coming from the right than coming from the left. These visual errors sparked my interest in trying to understand how the eyes aligned two targets in space. One of many experiments using natural observation involved observing an array of pins. When trying to solve this alignment problem, I noticed that while fixating on a particular pin, some pins moved but others ‘apparently’ did not. When I changed my focus to another pin I subsequently noticed that the pins that had moved before now ‘apparently’ remained static, while the pins that were static before had now moved. Upon closer observation, I realised that these groups of pins were moving back and forth from the monocular view of each eye, depending on which pin I was focusing on. I also realised that these two monocular views were viewed simultaneously and were obviously confined to a particular area in the binocular single vision field. I also recognised that the movement of objects from one monocular area to another in the binocular field, could not occur without natural boundaries being present, along with some form of dominance and suppression occurring.

More amazing, was that this proven observation would prove to be only a tiny part of a very large jigsaw, which would eventually lead me to discover the entire framework structure of the single image. More important, I discovered how this image structure, consisting of a series of sectional images, is filtered by the two eyes and transmitted along the visual pathways to the visual cortex. I discovered how the sectional images are assembled in a precise formation in the visual cortex to create a single stereo image. The final part of the jigsaw was to discover how the mythical cyclopean (cortex) eye actually functions and how visual perception benefits from this function.

This book illustrates and proves through natural observation and occlusion, all the stages of visual perception in each fixation. It explains and illustrates the vision process in an entirely new light, and it so contradicts virtually all the conventional theoretical understanding of visual perception. It demonstrates how the image received by each retina is divided by natural retinal boundaries. These boundaries create dominant and suppressed retinal-sections in each retina. The coordination between the two eyes results in retinal-sections of one eye becoming dominant while the corresponding retinal-sections in the other eye simultaneously become suppressed. This book explains how these dominant areas are transmitted along the visual pathways to the visual cortex where they are assembled into a single image in the visual cortex. It describes how these assembled dominant retinal-sections create a stereo image and how the vantage angle of each eye is retained in these sectional areas. It also explains how the visual axes are retained and how important their function is in completing the structure of this image.

Also, for the first time, this book defines and illustrates the function of the mythical cyclopean (cortex) eye. It explains how this eye has little value in visual direction (contrary to the view held by Hering) and illustrates for the first time how and why the function of this eye is the fundamental mathematical structure by which depth and distance judgement is coded. The very nature of its structure and function creates a whole new understanding of optic flow. The book explains how, where, and why occlusions occur. It demonstrates how these occluded targets are incorporated in the single image and how they benefit from the same mathematical structure as other targets in the binocular field. All the observation figures can be recreated as working models for proving each observation in this book. The book explains how visual direction is judged; how the stereo-image is formed; and how and why the dominant eye is of such high importance. It explains how and why the inverted image is also horizontally reversed. The evolution of the eye over millions of years has reached an incredible level of sophistication, so much so that one could not even imagine such a complex system without first observing each stage.

Every proven observation in this book was special to me, but perhaps the most special was the discovery that the monocular areas in the visual field, resulting from the occlusion of the nose, benefit from the mathematical structure created by the cyclopean (cortex) eye in exactly the same way as the sectional areas in the binocular field. This phenomenon benefits humans who have a large binocular field, but has huge benefits for animals such as birds, which have a small binocular overlap, but very large monocular fields.

The cyclopean (cortex) structure and function explain why all animals have high levels of visual accuracy. This results from continuous motion in the optic array created by the cyclopean (cortex) eye by the slightest movement of the eye when the head and body are static. This visual accuracy increases with motion of the body, which in turn creates proportional acceleration of the mathematical process. The visual process in this book is proven by natural observation and occlusion. It explains why animals with large binocular fields, animals with small binocular fields, slow moving animals and fast moving animals, all have excellent visual accuracy adapted to suit them in their own environments.

All tests consisted of simulated models of each illustration in this text regarding SSSRD, the cyclopean (cortex) eye, occlusion, the stereo image, visual direction, and optic flow. The same group of five, right-eye dominant observers, each possessing normal vision, carried out each test. Great care was taken to ensure that all tests were performed in optimal light conditions, in three-dimensional space.

As this book describes a complete new concept of how we perceive the world surrounding us, it provides an invaluable resource for students of biology, psychology, visual perception, neuroscience, and particularly researchers in the fields of visual neuroscience. 

John F. Price: Preface to "SSSRD and the Cortex Eye" (2011 Choice Publishing Ltd.)