Global Form Detection and Pattern Response Timing in
Macaque Visual Cortex

by

Matthew A. Smith

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
Center for Neural Science
New York University
January 2003

J. Anthony Movshon

© Matthew A. Smith

All Rights Reserved, 2003

``The physicist Richard Feynman once illustrated the extraordinary nature of vision as follows: We are immersed in a sea of electromagnetic waves whose lengths vary over a huge range. These waves interact with each other and with objects around us to present a cacophony of electromagnetic signals to our eyes. Through a tiny aperture, about 2 mm in diameter, the eye selects a small fraction of these wavelengths and, together with the brain, reconstructs the position, shape, color and motion of each object we see around us. Feynman compared the situation to that of a water bug floating on the surface at one corner of a swimming pool. The only information available to the bug comes from the movements of its body caused by the waves that reach it. Were the bug able to reconstruct from these waves the positions and motions of all the people entering, leaving and swimming in the pool, it would be doing something similar to what the eye and brain do with the minuscule electromagnetic disturbances passing through the pupil.''

James T. McIlwain, ``An Introduction to the Biology of Vision'' (1996)