Open research questions in Visual perception and processing mechanisms

What the literature leaves open

• Yet, it remains unknown whether this coupling generalises to episodic memory-guided viewing in humans, whether slow (3-6 Hz) and fast (6-10 Hz) theta bands play dissociable functions, and whether this coupling is sensitive to the direction of upcoming eye movements.

  Hippocampal theta distinguishes between memory-guided and exploratory saccades in humans · 2026 · DOI

• In mouse superior colliculus (SC), neurons are robustly tuned to motion direction and orientation, but it remains controversial whether these preferences are spatially organized, and how this organization relates to that found in the retinal input to the SC.

  Direction and orientation preferences in mouse superior colliculus and its retinal inputs align with topographic axes atop locally mixed tuning · 2026 · DOI

• Although correlation-based models explain responses of individual binocular neurons in primary visual cortex (V1), it remains elusive whether population representations formed by local correlation activity patterns can support depth perception under ambiguous inputs.

  Population codes for biological stereopsis extend beyond correlation-based binocular disparity computations · 2026 · DOI

• There is literature data on functional shifts in the immune system and vegetative nervous system of individuals suffering from acquired myopia of varying degrees, but there is no data on the peculiarity of processing stimuli addressed to the I and II signal systems.

  PERCEPTION AND PROCESSING PECULIARITIES OF INFORMATION ADDRESSED TO I AND II SIGNALING SYSTEMS IN THE CONTEXT OF MILD ACQUIRED MYOPIA · 2024 · DOI

• BACKGROUND: To reassess conflicting findings in earlier studies on the effect of aging on smooth pursuit and saccadic eye movements, we compared visual tracking in a large number of elderly normal subjects aged 75 to 93 years and a group of young adults aged 18 to 43 years.

  Age-Related Changes in Visual Tracking · 1994 · DOI

• CHUNK SIZE AND MEMORY SPAN the recall protocol Having segmented to test the hypothesis that can be held in a position is limited by the number of chunks this recall should be associated with hypothesis larger chunks, but that the number of chunks should be a small constant w:th;n the memory span (7 + 2) for all subjects.

  Perception in chess · 1973 · DOI

• 
 It is concluded that there is insufficient stimuli layout integrity to consider only the most minimal distance, characterized by angular units between the nearest adjacent stimuli; rather, what we also need to enter the statistical average stimuli layout integrity characteristics that reflect the visual information signal parameters in relation to the visual field area.

  Visual information reception effectiveness under different signal integrity · 1968 · DOI

• (iii) Orientation to the environment outside the range of vision The visible environment may be limited by enclosing surfaces such as those of a laboratory maze, and even in an open medium it is limited by the acuity of the eye, the clearness of the medium, and the level of the illumination.

  VISUALLY CONTROLLED LOCOMOTION AND VISUAL ORIENTATION IN ANIMALS* · 1958 · DOI

• There remains unexplored a mal's score was normal limited area along the lateral margin of the striate cortex which Cajal It perhaps corresponds to Rose's Area occipitalis, which lies above the optic interrupting radiation and cannot be extensively damaged without the radiation and producing a cortical blindness. In what respects, qualitative or quantitative, functions which are disrupted in man by extrastriate lesions differ from those which have been studied in the rat remains to be determined.

  The Mechanism of Vision: XVII. Autonomy of the Visual Cortex · 1942 · DOI

• , state: “His [the infant’s] visual field is delimited by the postural set of the t-n-r attitude. Lucas writes: “An infant will follow a light by the end of the first week, but coordinate action in vision is not completely established until about 3 months and even then can easily be affected” (20, p.

  I. A Genetic Study of Sustained Visual Fixation and Associated Behavior in the Human Infant from Birth to Six Months · 1942 · DOI

• M u n n ( 3 2 ) , in discussing the aspects of method which appar- ently account for the conflicting results on discrimination of visual figures by different animals secured by the Yerkes-Watson tech- nique, as compared to the results obtained with his own and Lash- ley’s method, discounts the significance of delayed feeding, while attributing the difference in results to the different methods of punishment employed. A further study of the English sparrow and other birds.

  Visual Discrimination in the Cat: I. The Capacity of the Cat for Visual Figure Discrimination · 1934 · DOI

• It is also worth noting that in the case of the so-called voluntary activity no data on the genesis of the response was at hand and that the behavior was ap- parently controlled by intra-organic conditions, I n my own study the vocal verbal and the subvocal verbal condi- tioned pupillary responses look as much like voluntary responses as do the so-called voluntary knee-jqrks and lid-reflexes.

  Conditioning and the Voluntary Control of the Pupillary Light Reflex · 1933 · DOI

• One dog demonstrated unequivocal evidence of discrimina- Downloaded by [University of Victoria] at 18:40 08 April 2015 VISUAL PATTERN blSCRIMINATION IN T H E DOG 373 tion between equilateral triangles with 9" sides when one triangle was presented with base down and the other with apex down.

  Visual Pattern Discrimination in the Dog · 1932 · DOI

• Significance statement Despite extensive work on the functional organization of scene processing in the human adult visual cortex, little is known about the developmental origins of category selectivity for visual scenes.

  The cortical scene processing network emerges in infancy, prior to independent navigation experience · 2026 · DOI

• However, both aspects of this hypothesis remain to be tested: how early scene selectivity first arises in human development, and whether it is driven by passive exposure to visual statistics.

  The cortical scene processing network emerges in infancy, prior to independent navigation experience · 2026 · DOI

• By adulthood, human cortex contains at least three regions that respond selectively to visual scene information, but it remains unknown when or how these regions develop.

  The cortical scene processing network emerges in infancy, prior to independent navigation experience · 2026 · DOI

• The lack of replication in the remaining subjects, whether driven by methodological factors or inherent individual differences, highlights ongoing baseline mapping challenges.

  Design and Validation of a Hybrid Stimulus fMRI Paradigm for Simultaneous Retinotopy and Mapping of Reading-Selective Visual Cortex · 2026 · DOI

• Memory shapes how we explore the visual world, but the neural mechanisms linking mnemonic processes to eye movements during naturalistic viewing are not well understood.

  Hippocampal theta distinguishes between memory-guided and exploratory saccades in humans · 2026 · DOI

• More broadly, the study offers a nuanced account of ensemble perception in which feature-specific and feature-general neural codes coexist across visual cortex, potentially reconciling previously conflicting evidence.

  Neural Representations of Ensemble Mean and Variance Across Visual Features · 2026 · DOI

• Together, these findings provide a more nuanced account of ensemble perception, showing that feature-specific and feature-independent neural codes can coexist across visual cortex and help reconcile previously conflicting evidence.

  Neural Representations of Ensemble Mean and Variance Across Visual Features · 2026 · DOI

• Specifically, 2D spatial features were represented earliest and most broadly, depth-related representations were weaker and more spatially restricted, and 3D feature representations were sparse and heterogeneous but detectable at the individual feature level.

  Unfolding spatiotemporal representations of 3D visual perception in the human brain · 2026 · DOI

• However, most studies typically examine 2D and depth information in isolation, leaving the integrated nature of 3D spatial encoding largely underexplored.

  Unfolding spatiotemporal representations of 3D visual perception in the human brain · 2026 · DOI

• It is not fully understood where this computation arises, but previous work suggests selectivity for object shape first emerges in cortical area V4.

  From stuff to things: Responses of neurons in macaque V4 to textures and objects · 2026 · DOI

• Before each saccade, perception is enhanced at the upcoming fixation location, but whether this enhancement depends on expectations about target features remains unknown.

  Dissociable effects of feature expectation on saccades and presaccadic perception · 2026 · DOI

• Despite its crucial importance across domains, the neural mechanisms supporting oculomotion have been underexplored, largely because eye movements are typically treated as artefacts to be removed from the neural signal.

  Ocular Response Functions reveal how ocular processes relate to neural activity · 2026 · DOI

Most-cited papers in Visual perception and processing mechanisms

• Contextual Cueing: Implicit Learning and Memory of Visual Context Guides Spatial Attention · Cognitive Psychology · 1998 · 1,390 citations
• The interplay between nonsymbolic number and its continuous visual properties. · Journal of Experimental Psychology General · 2011 · 310 citations
• Psychophysical scaling reveals a unified theory of visual memory strength · Nature Human Behaviour · 2020 · 199 citations
• Understanding the function of visual short-term memory: Transsaccadic memory, object correspondence, and gaze correction. · Journal of Experimental Psychology General · 2008 · 178 citations
• CRISP: A computational model of fixation durations in scene viewing. · Psychological Review · 2010 · 155 citations
• Using dynamic field theory to rethink infant habituation. · Psychological Review · 2006 · 147 citations
• Multistable Perception and the Role of the Frontoparietal Cortex in Perceptual Inference · Annual Review of Psychology · 2017 · 138 citations
• Spatiotemporal dynamics of orthographic and lexical processing in the ventral visual pathway · Nature Human Behaviour · 2020 · 123 citations
• The effect of mental workload on the visual field size and shape · Ergonomics · 1999 · 112 citations
• Serial Dependence in Perception · Annual Review of Psychology · 2023 · 112 citations

Most recent work

• Spatial Frequency Maps in Human Visual Cortex: A Replication and Extension · bioRxiv · 2026
• Cortex-wide characterization of decision-making neural dynamics during spatial navigation · Nature Communications · 2026
• What are the functions of primary visual cortex (V1)? · Current Opinion in Neurobiology · 2026
• Common Phenomenal and Neural Substrate Geometry in Visual Motion Perception. · bioRxiv · 2026
• Intrinsic geometry of trial-to-trial variability in primary visual cortex is optimal for robust representation of visual similarity · bioRxiv · 2026
• Degraded mapping of disparity tuning in visual cortex explains deficits in binocular depth perception · bioRxiv · 2026
• Brain-wide arousal signals are segregated from movement planning in the superior colliculus of the macaque · eLife · 2026
• Beyond the Focus of Expansion: Retinal curl as a functional signal for heading estimation. · bioRxiv · 2026
• Computational modeling of spatiotemporal afterimage visual perception with spiking neural networks · Frontiers in Neuroscience · 2026
• Visual Perception and Gamma Oscillations in Cat V1 are Dynamically Correlated in Contrast Sensitivity Functions · Neuroscience Bulletin · 2026

Related topics in Neuroscience