Form constants: Difference between revisions

It is believed that the reason why these form constants appear has to do with the way the visual system is organized, and in particular in the mapping between patterns on the retina and the columnar organization of primary visual cortex. Concentric circles in the retina are mapped into parallel lines in visual cortex. Spirals, tunnels, lattices and cobwebs map into lines in different directions. This means that if activation spreads in straight lines within the visual cortex, the experience is equivalent to looking at actual form constants.<ref> Bressloff, Paul C.; Cowan, Jack D.; Golubitsky, Martin; Thomas, Peter J.; Weiner, Matthew C. (March 2002). "What Geometric Visual Hallucinations Tell Us About the Visual Cortex" Neural Computation (The MIT Press) 14 (3): 473–491. | http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/089976602317250861</ref>

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