Vision of the Brain

Rating:
Summary: Color is not just something we see
Review: Zeki's book is the finest technical overview for how the brain "sees" color I have found. It is very technical and demands careful reading. It assumes a strong background in brain anatomy but the figures will give you most of the terms. The description of Edwin Land's Retinex theory is the crowning acheivement since it details that what we claim we "see" is just not limited the the wavelengths of photons striking the eye. The underlying thesis is that the brain is a distributed processing device with forward and backward feedback. There is a great deal of historical coverage to refute the idea that the brain has one or two areas where "seeing and understanding" take place. Zeki's conclusion is that the brain understands a visual scene by using many interconnected parts of the cortex and no single area is the has the final picture. I find it a very valuable resource to understand the various processing elements of the brain.

Rating:
Summary: Color is not just something we see
Review: Zeki's book is the finest technical overview for how the brain "sees" color I have found. It is very technical and demands careful reading. It assumes a strong background in brain anatomy but the figures will give you most of the terms. The description of Edwin Land's Retinex theory is the crowning acheivement since it details that what we claim we "see" is just not limited the the wavelengths of photons striking the eye. The underlying thesis is that the brain is a distributed processing device with forward and backward feedback. There is a great deal of historical coverage to refute the idea that the brain has one or two areas where "seeing and understanding" take place. Zeki's conclusion is that the brain understands a visual scene by using many interconnected parts of the cortex and no single area is the has the final picture. I find it a very valuable resource to understand the various processing elements of the brain.