A Stereoscopic Look at Visual Cortex

Three recent studies offer new insights into the way visual cortex handles binocular disparity signals. Two of these studies recorded from single neurons in two different visual areas of the monkey brain, one (V5/MT) in dorsal and one (V4) in ventral cortex. While V5/MT neurons respond similarly to neurons in primary visual cortex (V1), V4 neurons appear to reflect a more advanced stage in the analysis of retinal disparity, closer to the perceptual experience of stereoscopic depth. Both studies are consistent with a third study using fMRI to address similar questions in humans. Together with previous evidence, these results suggest a new framework for understanding stereoscopic processing based on the separation between ventral and dorsal streams in visual cortex.