Where visual search happens in the brain







‘Made you look’





Wrong targets




Expert searchers





Source: UC Santa Barbara

chat4 Comments


  1. Rose McClean

    Interesting read! It’s amazing what the human brain is capable of; many processes which have yet to be discovered by endocrinologists and other brain experts. This sounds like a topic that deserves better exploration and research especially of other benefits of the LOC.

  2. Bob Washick, Ed.D. LD

    My degree is in Learning Disabilities. My mission – why do some people read and write, and others have difficulty. Over the years I was in direct contact with mentally challenged, slow learner, regular student, gifted, gifted creative, blind, deaf … in short the gamut on the continuum of education. What did they have in common, what did they lack. The basics I realized was the ability to read and the ability to write. We probably take each for granted, but I wanted to know why some people SAW a letter or word backwards, different, in reverse, substitution etc. So, I started with the capital printed alphabet. Let’s make an +, actually a horizontal line, and cross it with a vertical line. In the right hand lower corner print an O, in the left hand lower corner, print an O left handed backwards, in the top upper right hand side, print an O upside down, in the left hand side make an O left handed upside down backwards. the results are basically the same, there is less error, and in the printed alphabet because so many letters can be printed left handed, right handed upside down, reversed etc – we are more assured of success. So with handedness or laterality at this level there is relatively little difficulty.

    But I noticed that students had the greatest difficulty in third grade. They had the most difficulty because of Cursive writing. Because of the loop that ties it together, you may follow the same procedure as above but get an O, but you know it is a little different. Many teachers for instance cannot write a cursive Q, yet it looks like an O, which is what they usually make and then put a small diagonal line at the bottom, indicating a Q. The Q is the exact opposite of the O – and that is where the difficulty occurs – we have reversals. And if for example we learned to print a capital A, from the Bottom line, diagonally up, stop, diagonally opposite and down, and connect both with a horizontal line, we have a perfect A (although it should have been started at the top). Why? Because research indicates that when you learn something, you go back to that learning point. A capital cursive A, starts from the Top down, not the Bottom up (so we have confusion as where to start), and although a student may start from the bottom in cursive, they will go up, down and around, repeat it and when they get to the bottom swing out – looks good, but the letters that follow will be confused, and that is why third grade for the most part is the most difficult.

    So when we talk vision, it isn’t only what we see, but how we produce what we see. It is why I was fascinated with the cave paintings in Spain and France. Animals, hands with curves and color. Why the curve, and that was answered when I read about Drs. Wiesel and Hubel who elicited design patterns from the visual cortex of cats: and lines through the visual cortex changed into curves, plasticity. And A, could be a B, or a car, or an animal. I knew there had to be something way prior to the caves, and that was answered in 2002 when Dr. Henshilwood discovered design patterns in the Blombos Caves of Africa 70,000 years old, 35,000 years older than the cave drawings. Similar designs might be found on the Wide Range Achievement Test, or the Bender Gestalt, but what was more exciting is that I had similar designs copyrighted in 1978, You don’t design pyramids, temples, spears, arrow heads, building all things around us without linear movement. I believe the visual motor section of the brain has basically stayed the same, but it accommodated new environments and has improved man from even the days earlier than the Blombos caves to today’s computer. I do change reading and writing in nine hours of work by design patterns.

  3. Joanne

    Great information.
    I am looking for information regarding vision recovery therapy for my 22 y/o son who had a stroke secondary to lupus.Please help.

  4. Brianna

    interesting it will help me with my science fair

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