The Powerful Sense of Vision

If you can read, don’t take it for granted that this is a skill everyone can do more or less. Reading is not an inherited ability; instead, it is a new skill for the human brain, which desires to communicate ideas via learned written scripts. The major difference between an effective reader and a new reader is the extent to which the brain can convert visual information into biochemical signals that integrate with other senses to make meaning. All our senses give us vital information about our surroundings to make meaning, but the one we rely on most in reading (and in other activities) is vision. The following section explains how the visual sensation turns into thinking.

The Visual Perception and Language

When visual signals collected from the eye carry basic components of light, color, and shape, etc. to other parts of the brain, the brain interprets this barrage of unstructured data, and if possible, creates meaningful images – the people, places, things, or written scripts that we recognize and react together with the visible world. This interpretation requires complex mental process called perception.

Most of this processing takes place in the occipital cortex, the rearmost part of the highly evolved outer layer of the brain. Signals from the eye arrive here after passing through the thalamus, a kind of witching station for all the senses.

In the occipital cortex, this information is sent on to some 30 different regions, each specializing in its own aspect of sight. The underside of the cortex organizes visual signals into shapes and colors; signals going to its upper part register location and motion. One region specializes in faces; another, places. A tiny patch of circuitry, called visual word form area, responds to words when we learn to read.

When we register words (visual or auditory) with visual perceptions, we consolidate memory and emotion into a complete circuitry that creates accessing pathways for later use of all this information during communication.

As with the other senses, visual perception engages other parts of the brain as well – signals flow back and forth to regions that store memory, govern emotion, make decisions, and initiate action – as we recognize, interpret, and react to what we see. When we register words (visual or auditory) with visual perceptions, we consolidate memory and emotion into a complete circuitry that creates accessing pathways for later use of all this information during communication.

It’s a highly active process. The brain “completes” pictures and labels them with language, so you can envision an object from a written script image, and sense the feeling of happy, angry, or frightened at the same time. The brain is a synergistic organ.

Art & Vision

The visual arts-drawing, cartooning, sculpture- showcase the power and complexity of our sense of sight. When we appreciate a great paining, we discriminate subtleties of color and brightness, and we respond to the relationship between forms. The transforming power of perception makes a flat surface seem three-dimensional.

Art connects the visual system with other brain areas. Research suggests that we activate regions that control posture and motion that correspond to the positions of depicted features, and our emotional center resonate with feelings expressed on canvas or in marble.

That the artist sees the world differently reflects, in part, the way higher brain areas can be trained to process visual information. Learning to draw, one researcher found, leads to changes in the visual cortex and regions that facilitate working memory.