Cortical streams of visual information processing in primates

RESUMO

1. The topographic organization of the cortical visual areas in the Cebus monkey and their anatomical connections support the subdivision of the visuaol pathways into ventral and dorsal streams of visual information provessing. 2. We propose that the dorsal stream, as defined by Ungerleider and Mishkin (In Ingle DJ, Goodale MA and Mansfield RJW (Editors), Analysis of Visual Behavior, MIT Press, Boston, 1982), be subdivided into dorsolateral and dorsomedial streams, which are concerned with different aspects of the processing of motion and spatial perception. 3. The data support the hypothesis of concurrent, modular processing of visual attributes in cortical visual areas in the different streams, and highlight some features of the visual field representation in each area which may reflect functional specialization of these streams. 4. The visual topography is locally disrupted in some cortical areas by the existence of functionally different modules, However, a global visuotopic organization is preserved in most areas. 5. The visuotopic organization may provide the address of space coordinates to integrate information concerning the same retinotopic across different visual areas